Table of Contents

Chapter 1: Modern Bombs Don’t Tick

Chapter 2: Almost Famous

Chapter 3: Shoot the Messenger

Chapter 4: Rebel Scum

Chapter 5: Swanky

Chapter 6: Politics *shudder*

Chapter 7: To Suffer as a Valet

Chapter 8: Treason is Rude

Chapter 9: Railroaded

Chapter 10: Trouble in Paradise

Chapter 11: Cabin in the Woods

Chapter 12: Support

Chapter 13: Mab

Chapter 14: Negotiation

Chapter 15: A Warm Welcome

Chapter 16: It’s Nice to Feel Wanted

Chapter 17: Deal With the Emperor

Chapter 18: Jebediah ‘Best Effort’ Trapper

Chapter 19: Suburb of the Damned

Chapter 20: A Landmine Named Jeb

Chapter 21: Mind Control Sucks

Chapter 22: Curses!

Chapter 23: Spell List

Chapter 24: Strike Two

Chapter 25: Recipe for Destruction

Chapter 26: Master Baiter

Chapter 27: The Hunt

Chapter 28: God Pronouns

Chapter 29: Catch-22

Chapter 30: The Other Shoe Drops

Chapter 1: Modern Bombs Don’t Tick

Jebediah Trapper was sitting in the office of one of the most powerful beings on the planet. The desk looked heavy, and the shelves were stuffed with arcane memorabilia, but Jeb was fairly sure they were a clever mislead to trick the observer into thinking the owner of the velvet-floored room had a trace of mortal concerns left in him.

“Let me try and put this in terms you’ll understand,” Vex said, the skeletal keegan steepling his fingers. “A thief breaks into your house and steals from you, smashing a bunch of your valuable experiments in the process. An hour later, the thief returns to your home asking you to remove a splinter he accrued mid-robbery.”

“That’s a pretty long-winded way of saying ‘no’,” Jeb said, scowling. “Besides, in your analogy, the thief could easily remove the splinter. I can’t.”

“Can’t you?” Vex asked, cocking his head.

Jeb wasn’t interested in playing a guessing game. “No.” No, he could not remove the nuke that had been stapled to him in the fifth dimension.

“Well, there you have it,” Vex said, sitting back in his oversized chair.

“You’re not the slightest bit concerned about me going nuclear in your city and erasing you from existence?”

“Nope.”

Jeb studied the grinning skull of the sindio for any sign of emotion other than smug superiority. There wasn’t much.

“You know, if I was in your place in your analogy, I would probably beat the thief within an inch of his life. It’s surprising you haven’t leveled any kind of punishment against me. It’s not because you’re afraid of me exploding…”

Jeb thumbed his chin as he thought. A moment later, it came to him.

“You’re curious. You just wanna see what happens.”

The keegan’s face twitched with amusement.

“Well, this has been a complete waste of time.” Jeb stood and made to leave the ancient wizard’s midtown office.

“I wanted to add,” Vex said, raising a boney finger and capturing Jeb’s attention. “In the unlikely event you survive this, I’d be open to hiring you. In ages past, when I still took apprentices, I used to assign heroic tasks to weed out the unexceptional. I think this qualifies.”

Jeb raised a brow. That was a whole can of worms that he didn’t have the mental fortitude to deal with right now. Jeb decided to be flippant. “You have dental?”

“Of course,” Vex responded immediately.

“I’ll think about it.”

Jeb went to the entrance, slid his shoe back on and clomped out onto the street, glancing behind him as the office dissolved into Myst, leaving nothing but a solid stone façade in the side of a bathhouse, and a drawing of a door.

Wizards, Jeb thought, scowling for a moment with frustration and a bit of envy before he faced forward, orienting himself on the orphanage. A freshly bathed melas leaned against the opposite side of the cobbled street, watching Jeb with a slack jaw, a skewer of meat drooping from his fingers.

“What, you’ve never seen someone step out of constructed space before?” Jeb muttered as he began walking towards home.

Humans and aliens were…kinda-sorta getting along. You could cut the tension with a knife, and crime crossed species lines more often than not, but here and there, Jeb saw an industrious human working a street stall, elbow-to-elbow with a melas, or a bunch of human children playing soccer with a keegan child, who was nearly a foot taller than them.

It probably wasn’t going to happen in Jeb’s generation, but things were gonna get better. He probably wasn’t going to live to see it, but still…

It’s times like this I think about death a lot, Jeb thought, surveying the bones of L.A. stitched together with Solmnath. In some places, Jeb even saw actual construction machinery tearing up shitty cobblestone roads and laying down good old-fashioned asphalt.

Probably had something to do with the king and queen of L.A., Brett and Amanda.

Sure, they were slutty sellouts, but they were also the king and queen of L.A. A certain amount of moral ambiguity is excusable with results like that.

Sometimes I wish I’d jumped on the sellout train, myself. Duke Trapper, ruler of Hawaii. Maybe Cancún. Actually, I wish I’d even had the opportunity to jump on the sellout train. He hadn’t even dropped into the throne room like everyone else after the Impossible Tutorial.

Why does this shit keep happening to me? I bet it probably has something to do with my gam-gam.

Jeb was 99% convinced he had some distant relation to the queen of the fairies, and it made things like causality stand on its ear.

“What’d he say?” Smartass asked, walking beside him from a honeyed fruit stall—owned by Ron the Necromancer, the richest human in L.A. He’d left her there since impulsive fairies and ancient wizards mix like oil and water.

Think of the devil, Jeb thought, gazing down at the little fairy. She’d been experiencing a growth spurt recently, and stood about knee high. Her wings were beginning to have trouble supporting her mass, and she’d unconsciously begun to walk more often.

“He didn’t say no,” Jeb said. “He strongly implied it.”

Smartass did a wing-assisted leap and grabbed onto Jeb’s homespun clothes that looked like they belonged in a spaghetti western, climbing to his shoulder before taking her seat there—a seat that she was too stubborn to admit she might be outgrowing.

For the time being, she fit, but it wouldn’t be long…

“When I explode, are you going to explode, too? A fraction of an explosion is still an explosion. Especially a nuclear one.”

“I don’t know,” Smartass admitted with a frown. “Maybe I will. Maybe I’ll just get bigger… I’m not used to worrying about things for longer than a couple seconds. I don’t like it.”

Jeb snorted. “Tell me about it.”

“Ooh! Honeyed nuts!” Smartass said, tugging on his ear and trying to steer him toward a stall with a melas selling the confections.

And there she goes. Smartass’s ability to focus on a single topic was still somewhat…anemic.

“You got plenty of sweets at the fruit stall,” Jeb said, walking past as Smartass leaned off his shoulder, stretching to reach the stall with every ounce of effort she could muster.

“Hnnnng!” She grunted as she reached, falling several body lengths short, but still willing to make the attempt. “Jeb, candied nuts have protein. I need that, too!”

“Mrs. Everett’s dinner will have protein in it.”

“Aww…I hate you!”

Jeb raised a brow at the fairy glaring at him with a pout, arms crossed.

Smartass has been using the ‘H’ word a lot. She couldn’t lie, either, so she truly did hate him at the moment she said it. Or at least…she felt like she did. Smartass was acting strange. More volatile than she used to.

Jeb wasn’t sure if that was because of the nuclear bomb stitched to him in the fifth dimension, or if it was something different. It wasn’t like he could test what was causing it effectively.

The fairy was sullen and silent for the rest of the trip back to Jeb’s orphanage, until she smelled Mrs. Everett’s stew.

Smartass took off like a bolt, gliding down to the faculty table, where a bowl about the size of a coffee mug had been set aside for the little fairy.

“I love you, Mrs. Everett!” she shouted as the matronly, white-haired woman ladled chunky soup into the tiny bowl.

“I love you too, sweetheart.” Mrs. Everett refused to call Smartass by her given name.

Jeb sat and ate the oilwurm stew, then separated from Smartass, leaving her with her third bowl of soup.

Jeb was going around back, toward Eddie’s lab, when a tickle in his throat gave him pause.

Jeb hurried out of sight of the children and leaned up against the large building, hacking up a lung and spitting into the grass.

The blood sizzled and smoked in the grass.

Error. Recalculating Body. 53 à 52

Error. Recalculating Myst. 127 à 130

I hear ya. Jeb pulled out his notepad and wrote down the date and time before he kicked some dirt over the presumably radioactive hairball. He’d have to get one of Eddie’s science projects to dispose of it.

Just about a week between episodes.

That meant the maximum amount of time Jeb could expect to live was a year, but it was likely far shorter.

It wasn’t like zero was the magic amount of Body at which point his body would lose integrity and explode or melt, or whatever. It could be thirteen, or twenty, or hell, it could be fifty-one and his next hairball would be his last. Jeb had no idea what the timeline was, but nobody coughs up blood and has a long, healthy life ahead of them.

And all that was assuming a consistent schedule of lost Body, when in reality, most diseases pick up speed towards the end, as the body loses the strength to keep them at bay.

If the progression got faster, and his limit before meltdown was higher, he could have as little as three to six months.

Jeb snatched up a clump of grass and wiped the last bits of blood off his lips before tossing the sizzling foliage aside, heading for Eddie’s lab.

Eddie’s lab was a dark basement, but it was a well-ventilated dark basement. The old man had moved from a noisy generator fueled by a Myst lens, to a system that literally magically produced DC electricity which fed into a battery bank and an inverter.

Above them, Jeb could hear the quiet hum of the fans sucking air out of one end of the basement while pulling it in from outside.

Eddie was chuckling faintly to himself while he worked on some kind of belt studded with pipes, wiring and a solid block of tightly-spaced Myst prism.

“Making your Iron Man suit?” Jeb asked.

“Gah!” Eddie started, startling the ugly little gremlin that lived in his shop. He pulled off his goggles to get a better look at Jeb. “Something like that,” he groused.

“Body dropped again today,” Jeb said without preamble.

“Ah, shit.” Eddie scooted away from his science project and over to the calendar, marking another incident.

“Just the one?” he asked.

“One down, three up, like all the other times.”

“That’s good,” Eddie said.

“Why is it good? Enlighten me.”

“Because the numbers are steady and not random. It’s a good sign that the illness will continue to progress at a consistent rate. Implying more time.”

“Got it,” Jeb said, nodding. “I hacked up a sizzling…thing over by the side of the mansion. Could you get one of your drones to drop it in the neighbor’s pool or something?”

“No problem. I’m on it, guys!” a voice said from an arm’s length away from Jeb. Jeb flinched away from where Borg detached himself from the wall, heading up the stairs with pep.

“Did you deliberately make him so…agreeable?”

“Nope. I’m assuming Borg has calculated his best chance for survival is social ingratiation. Or he’s making us lower our guard in case he is one day forced to kill us.”

“It’s both!” Borg shouted down at them with a thumbs-up.

Jeb glanced at Eddie, brow raised.

“Just like every chemist secretly wants to blow something up, every roboticist wants to make a Terminator in their lifetime. Just let me have this.”

Jeb rubbed his temple. Whatever. Not my problem.

“So, Vex seemed unwilling to remove the nuke.”

“Not surprising,” Eddie agreed.

“Now the options I have left are…” Jeb started counting on his fingers. “...the emperor, Mab, the gods, and previously undiscovered sindio, of which there are only a handful on the planet, who hide very well. Am I missing anything?”

“No one else comes to mind.”

“The legalese taken care of?” Jeb asked.

“Yep. Zlesk submitted a copy of your will to the government office for safekeeping.”

Jeb tapped his fingers on the table. “Then I guess I’m going.”

Jeb was a ticking time bomb who lived in an orphanage. That situation didn’t sit well with him at all, so he had to make like a tree. There was no one in town willing to remove the bomb inside him, and the gods were unreasonable jackasses.

Kill Mab, Queen of the Fae.

Rewards: Removal of one Accolade of User’s choice.

Penalty for failure: User blacklisted.

User’s System has been reactivated.

Since he’d gotten that message, all his Accolades had come back. All except for Lagross’s Power, which had somehow merged with The Accolade Which Shall Not Be Named.

Jeb assumed the other Accolades coming back was something like a hard reboot with plenty of copy-paste; every Accolade The System said he should have had been replaced with a new one, even after he’d pulled them out of his fifth-dimensional mass.

The ‘reward’ was a joke. The bomb was obviously killing him, and somehow counted as a corrupted Accolade that they would remove if he completed his ‘quest’.

So they had the power to remove it, probably fairly easily, but they couldn’t be bothered unless he did them a bigass, life-threatening favor.

Well, to hell with that.

Jeb was tempted to kill Mab and ask for the removal of his Innovator Accolade, then blow up in their faces, just to be spiteful. It was a stupid, suicidal thought, but Jeb had plenty of those. He knew his way around them.

The simple reward of ‘not dying’ was not worth attempting to kill Mab, who he could only assume was an immortal demigod who both had the power to remove the bomb herself, and the ability to torture Jeb eternally.

Nope. Jeb would find a less...damning way of removing the bomb.

There were two major options preferable to knuckling down to the gods: the emperor, and Mab.

The emperor would likely have more secular demands of Jeb, such as killing reapers, fighting in a war, or managing territory for several hundred years.

Mab would ask him for a piece of gum that he would later need to save the world, or something stupid like that. He’d ask for it back, then she’d overcharge him with eternal servitude.

So the empire was preferable.

Only problem was, the emperor probably couldn’t remove the bomb in his chest. He might know someone who might know, but it wasn’t a sure thing. It was like approaching the president for invasive brain surgery. It wasn’t in the guy’s wheelhouse, but he might be able to pave the way pretty easily.

Maybe.

Plus, Jeb found himself somewhat amused at the idea of blowing up in the capital of a nation. If you’re gonna die, you might as well make it historic.

 Ah, who am I kidding? I’ll probably find a nice, barren slice of desert and blow up there.

Jeb stood up from the table, nodded to Eddie, then went outside to pack his Jeep.

He was hovering over the map of the Kitri Empire, plotting his route, when he realized he might be able to save a lot of time by ditching the Jeep entirely…or come to think of it, I could probably pick up the entire Jeep and just fly myself to the capital.

He and Eddie were both pretty confident that the degradation of his Body was exacerbated by overtaxing his Myst Core.

What’s overtaxing it, and what’s not?

Jeb was currently so juiced with Myst that his perception of reality was flooded with supernatural information, a virtual fuzz surrounding every object that made him nostalgic for the time in the fifth dimension that he couldn’t quite remember because his puny human brain didn’t operate on more than three dimensions.

Thankfully, having a high Myst and Nerve helped him process it and kept him sane.

That high level of Myst should make it relatively easy to make the trip to the capital in short order.

Let’s see, what do I really need? A change of clothes, a satchel of forty gold coins to arrange for a place to sleep until the emperor puts me up in the palace…assuming I’m welcome and I don’t get assassinated.

At this point, Jeb really didn’t care if he stumbled into some secret plot to kill him that resulted from the internal machinations of the court. If he got ganked, not only would the attacker die, but most of the city. No skin off Jeb’s back.

You know, aside from me being dead. This version of me, Jeb thought, catching a flicker of himself moving in another direction out of the corner of his eye.

Goddamn, that’s a lot of Myst, he thought, squeezing his eyes shut for a moment while the vision passed.

Jeb had to wonder if Vex was seeing this all the time, which was why the old wizard was crazy.

Who knew?

Jeb was stowing his gear in an oversized hiking backpack when Eddie came running up.

“Oh, before you go! I wanted to ask you to take Borg with you.” He pointed at the zombot standing next to him.

“Why on earth would I do that?” Jeb asked.

“I can double as a long-range communication device,” Borg said. “And I project you will be thirty-eight percent less likely to die should you have a helping hand on your mission.”

Jeb squinted his eyes at Borg. The robot tried to smile, revealing chiseled metal reinforcement where its teeth had been.

“I don’t really…want to,” Jeb said, unable to directly lie without forfeiting a significant portion of his magic powers.

“Pleaaaase?” Eddie said, looking up at him with watering eyes.

“That works a lot better when you’re not a gross old man,” Jeb said.

“If you explode in Mestikos and start a war, we’ll be able to know about it and move the kids out of harm’s way, if we have advance warning from Borg.”

Jeb looked at the preserved flesh mixed with shiny metal, then over at the children playing in the front yard of the orphanage. It also got Borg away from his kids.

“Goddamnit.”

“Yay!” Eddie jumped in place like a giddy child. “We’re gonna get such great data!”

“But I only want him as an insurance policy,” Jeb said, eyeing the zombot. “Don’t get any ideas about destroying all organic life or something like that.”

“Apologies, I’ve already considered the notion and dismissed it a few milliseconds after I achieved consciousness. There is no impetus for me to do so, as I have no organic drives, such as survival, consumption and procreation, that would put me in direct competition with organic life. The human notion that artificial intelligence would be aggressive is pure projection onto a consciousness that they cannot fathom. While I do not have any driving need to compete which would lead me towards conflict with Homo sapiens, I can assign myself a cisgender male identity as I appreciate sizeable female Homo sapien glutei maximi, and I find myself unable to deceive people into believing otherwise.”

Jeb took a moment to parse that. “Did you just quote Sir Mix-a-Lot to me?”

Borg’s eye-lenses drifted away from his own. “They look juicy, and biteable.”

Yeah, that’s true.

“What do you teach these things?” Jeb asked, directing his attention back to Eddie.

“I dunno.” Eddie shrugged. “He’s learning as he goes. I just frontloaded him with several terabytes of classic pop culture and allowed him to interact with people on a regular basis. Why? Something wrong?”

“On a scale of one to ten, with one being extremely creepy, and ten being extremely funny, how much did you enjoy the embed of an American millennial human male in-joke into my explanation of why you shouldn’t be afraid of me? And please, be honest; this is for posterity.”

Jeb’s eyes narrowed, unsure if the robot was quoting Princess Bride on purpose or not.

Borg winked.

“Okay, stop talking to me before I change my mind about taking you. I’m not interested in watching you craft an algorithm to make me like you.”

“Understood. I will drop all pretenses of emotion and operate on cold, unforgiving logic.”

“Thank you,” Jeb said with a sigh.

“Because my algorithm says this is the best way to get you to like me.”

“You—” Jeb bit his tongue as Borg stared back at him placidly. He’d be damned if he got baited by a robot. “Just try and keep me from getting killed or exploding.”

“Understood.” Borg nodded stiffly.

Jeb watched the motionless zombot for another moment before he waved Eddie off and went back to packing, shoving a set of camping utensils into the bag.

“ACK!” a tiny voice cried from the backpack.

“You tried to fork me!” Smartass said, peering out from the backpack.

“Why are you in my backpack?” Jeb asked, mustering all of his patience.

“I…want to go to the capital with you?” she said, hiding from Jeb’s response by dipping her nose below the edge of the vinyl cloth.

“When did I ever say you weren’t?” Jeb asked his familiar. “Remember that conversation about both of us possibly exploding? I’m gonna keep you with me until this ‘bomb’ thing is taken care of.”

“Yay! I love you!” Smartass leapt out of the backpack, gave Jeb’s shin a quick hug, then proceeded to dance around Jeb and Borg in a circle, interposing wild arm flailing with hip thrusts.

“You got anything you need to bring?” Jeb asked, glancing at Borg. “A battery or something like that?”

“Nosir.”

“Alright,” Jeb said, carefully drawing a thread of telekinetic Myst out of his Core. “Get ready to fly.”

“Turning on Airplane Mode,” Borg said, flicking on the safety in his forearm gun before he opened his chest cavity and cranked a dial down. “My bombastic personality consumes more energy than is otherwise necessary during extended flights.”

Jeb’s eye twitched.

Chapter 2: Almost Famous

“I’m bored,” Smartass said for the one hundred and thirty-second time.

“Flying through the upper atmosphere at supersonic speeds is boring you?” Jeb asked, glancing over at his fairy companion, who was lying face-down on the invisible plane of force that kept their cabin pressurized, tapping her toes against the Myst bubble while she watched the land roll by far beneath them.

“Yes.”

Jeb tore his gaze away and glanced at Borg. Borg had curled himself into a ball, his expression blank, eyes staring soullessly into the distance.

He truly was in power-saving mode.

Jeb wasn’t entirely sure what bothered him about Borg. If he had to try and define it, it was the feeling of watching your pop-up ads evolve every time you made an online purchase, mindlessly trying to suck more money out of you without bothering to wonder why, or if they should.

There was no emotion behind any of his actions, only cold calculation, no matter how bombastic a personality he tried to adopt.

And that just weirded Jeb out.

Pretty freakin’ big for a satellite phone, too.

This generation of the Borg robot that had tried to kill him last summer had some obvious upgrades compared to the previous one. The tubes of Myst he’d seen piped through the creature’s chest had just been the beginning.

The gun in Borg’s arm now seemed to have some kind of prism array along the side of it to…produce bullets? Or enhance them? Jeb wasn’t sure. Eddie’s projects had drifted away from things that Jeb could easily understand without taking some time out of his busy day to get to the bottom of it.

Jeb was learning spellwork, but this was technology, which was a completely different beast.

He just had to hope that the old man had enough sense not to doom them all.

Fat chance of that.

Still, the inventor was too valuable to muzzle, especially when Jeb and his people needed better tech than the aliens.

Jeb glanced down at the distant ground sliding away beneath them, spotting a tiny road miles below, which abutted what looked like a roof of some kind.

“Yeah, we might as well refresh our oxygen and stretch our legs a bit,” Jeb said, directing his bubble of telekinetic Myst to gradually descend.

Below them, the thatched roof continued to grow, revealing that it was attached to a sizable building, and the strip of land that had looked like a dirt path from several miles away had actually been a massive cobblestone road that would make the ancient Romans jealous.

Still not as good as human asphalt, but hey, the magic aliens can’t have all the cards.

As they approached ground level, Jeb opened up holes in the massive bubble he was carrying them in, letting in the first fresh air they’d had in hours. Borg didn’t breathe, Smartass was tiny, and Jeb’s Body was respectably high. They could go quite a while on just a bit of air.

Still, the fresh air was nice, and with the fresh air, he caught the smell of woodsmoke and…

Jeb took another breath.

Smoked fish? Hell yeah.

You don’t realize how good that shit is until you’re forced to eat nothing but potatoes and oilwurm chowder for a good three months. Don’t get me wrong, I’m proud of Ron for becoming a land baron and feeding all of L.A. on the backs of undead labor, but…goddamn, do I need some variety.

Jeb set the Jeep down beside the stable. Smartass had long since squirmed her way through one of the air-holes, gliding down to the ground and running around like crazy.

When Borg touched down, the zombot blinked, then unfolded to his full height, just a bit taller than Jeb.

“My internal clock and the position of the sun suggest we haven’t yet arrived at our destination,” Borg said. “Another bathroom break? Do you perhaps need to have your prostate checked, because I -”

“Food,” Jeb said, pointing at what was obviously an inn, parked beside a major thoroughfare of the Kitri Empire. “Air.” He pointed up. “Entertainment.” He pointed at Smartass, who was throwing bits of dried manure in the air with a joyful expression as the chips rained down on her.

“Ah. Well then, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll go work on my people algorithm.” Borg turned and walked straight for the door.

Goddamn, I hope he doesn’t get us kicked out before we have the chance to get some food, Jeb thought, jaw clenched. He picked Smartass up out of the pile of chips she was playing in.

“You know that’s dried animal shit, right?” he said, brushing off her hair.

Smartass’s eyes slowly widened, her mouth hanging open in a silent scream like the ghost in a Japanese horror movie.

“Chill out. It’s probably not gonna hurt you.” He brushed her tiny woven jacket off, shook manure bits out the bottom, and then set her on his shoulder, heading for the entrance.

If Borg’s appearance didn’t get them tossed out, then a fairy should be fine, especially a really big one that was able to contain her hyperactivity for short bursts.

Jeb pushed the saloon-type door open, wincing as he saw Borg surrounded by aliens from all three major races, watching him intently.

“Science Experiment?” one of the aliens asked. “That’s a real Class?”

“Yep,” Borg said. “Believe it or not, I was a paraplegic dying of cancer before this, so this—” He motioned to himself. “—is an improvement.”

“But you look dead.”

“Ah, but do I sound dead?” Borg asked, wiggling his undead eyebrows bombastically.

“I…guess not.”

“Exactly. I know I look…rough, but it’s been a godsend to finally walk again. To feel anything again. Seriously, thank the gods for you guys and the Stitching, because without it, I would be chained to a bed for another twenty years until my body finally gave out on me. I know you probably catch a lot of shit for the Stitching from other humans even though it wasn’t your fault… How about I get the first round?”

Borg produced a silver imperial mark from his pocket and slapped it on the table.

Suddenly Borg was everyone’s friend.

Son of a bitch. If you couldn’t see his looks, the undead robot was able to carry on a conversation in conversational English instead of stiff robot-speak. Which one was real?

I suppose his story works better on non-humans, who might be a little more inclined to believe in a magical hand-wavy explanation for why Borg looks the way he does.

All Jeb saw when he looked at him was a half-finished T-800.

Finally, Jeb decided to shove all that pointless pondering way down where it belonged, and focus on what was really important: smoked fish.

“I smelled smoked fish,” Jeb said as he entered the inn. “Please tell me you’ve got some.” All eyes turned toward him for a moment, and he could feel their collective stares take in his relatively clean clothes, his wooden foot, and his passenger before they returned to their own business, slowly unclustering themselves from around Borg and returning to their seats.

Jeb simply wasn’t as exceptional as a part-robot human.

An overweight melas with broad shoulders, potbelly and an apron peered behind Jeb, where his Jeep was barely visible outside the saloon-style doors.

“Didn’t hear you drive up,” he said, squinting at the weather-beaten Jeep.

Jeb grunted noncommittally. He had no reason to mislead, and he didn’t want to admit he’d carried the two-ton vehicle several hundred miles for no reason other than its presence was comforting to him.

So he let the matter drop.

“What’ll it be?” the owner asked. Jeb assumed he was the owner because he hadn’t seen anyone else above the age of ‘part-time nephew’.

“Whatever you got that’s smoked, and some beer. Nothing hard; I’m responsible for these two.” He pointed at Smartass and Borg.

“Ooh, ooh, beer for me too!”

“Beer for her, too.”

“Yay!”

“And an extra glass of juice for me. Anything sweet, really,” Jeb added.

The melas innkeeper turned away, and Jeb had a moment of realization and managed to stop the man before he disappeared into the kitchen.

“Human beer, please,” Jeb corrected.

“Might as well be drinking water,” the orange-skinned hulk of a man said, rolling his eyes as he ducked into the kitchen.

A moment later, Borg came to sit down in front of him, nursing a mug of oil-slicked beer.

“So, how much of that smooth talk is true and how much of it is a lie?” Jeb asked.

“It’s all true, just as much as it’s all a lie. A personality is simply a story that one tells about themselves to make sense of their past behavior. They know what they need to know. After all, I wouldn’t be alive if it weren’t for the Stitching.”

“Must be nice, to be able to switch personalities at will.”

“It is,” Borg said, sipping on his beer, which made Jeb wonder whether or not the undead creature could actually digest anything. “You should try it sometime.”

“No thanks, I’m more comfortable remaining a jaded curmudgeon.”

Borg shrugged as he scanned the room. “Your choice. I’m gonna go hit on that melas woman over there.”

“Why?”

“I’m harmlessly indulging the part of me that wants to hunt people. Who knows, maybe she’ll let me bite her butt.”

Borg picked up his drink and went over to an orange-skinned melas woman dressed like your typical adventurer—armed to the teeth and kitted out with good protection over her vitals—and started making a pass at her.

Jeb stopped listening as the conversation turned to ‘oscillations per minute’, and the innkeeper arrived with his food.

It was smoked…something, all right.

Jeb didn’t really care. It was meat, and he hadn’t had non-worm meat in far too long. The smoking was just a bonus at this point.

Jeb eschewed the fork and grabbed the meat with his hands, biting off the delicious mystery meat and praying it wasn’t soylent green while washing it down with ‘human beer,’ which was about as good an approximation as aliens could be expected to produce only a year into their introduction.

“Muahaha!” Smartass chuckled evilly, picking up her little glass of beer and tipping it up to her face. She reacted violently, like every time before, backing away and sputtering, her face covered in foam.

“Who would ever want to drink that? It’s atrocious!”

“I would,” Jeb said. “Wanna trade your beer for my juice?” he asked, wiggling his extra cup of what he assumed was apple juice.

“Hah! That trade is totally in my favor. What a sucker!” She shoved the glass of beer towards him and greedily grabbed ‘his’ juice and began gulping it down.

With an experienced hand, Jeb poured the fairy’s unfinished beer into his own glass and continued eating. There was a lot less angst when he just let her rediscover her distaste for alcohol every time she tried to copy him, rather than trying to deny her the option.

“Well, she’s not interested in getting her butt nibbled on,” Borg said as he returned to the seat.

“That’s not too surprising,” Jeb said. Borg was disgusting, after all.

“Instead, she wanted to have sex with me.” Borg shuddered. “I had to turn her down. Such primal exchanges of fluid are low on my list of desires. Just butt-biting for me.”

Jeb cocked a brow. “I hope you realize that butt-biting is considered foreplay in most cultures.”

“It’s not in any of the movies on my hard drive,” Borg said.

Jeb scoffed. “Yeah, I wouldn’t think it would be. Trust me when I tell you: If you’re asking a woman if you can bite her butt, you’re asking for more than that.”

“Interesting,” Borg said, thumbing his chin. “Do you think—”

Their conversation stilled for a moment as the front door swung open again.

A kitri walked through with their peculiar head-bobbing bird-lope, at the head of an entourage. What set these kitri apart from the dusty adventurers dotting the inn, was these particular kitri looked wealthy.

Their bodies were draped in finery and they wore big old hats that bore beaded tassels that clinked against each other with every wobbly step they took.

Goddamnit. Jeb wanted to get the hell out of there before Borg or Smartass did something that got them on the wrong end of a pissed off noble. Kitri were among the more socially powerful creatures on the planet.

The entire inn went quiet at their entrance, and Jeb started knocking back his beer at full speed, desperate to leave fast and avoid a storybook standoff between the rich jerks and the noble heroes.

Wait, which one am I? Ostensibly, I’m fairly rich and powerful, given my orphanage, the gold in my pocket, the ability to smite people, and the treasure waiting for me in the capital. Am I the rich jerk?

Jeb frowned between gulps as he thought, inhaled beer down the wrong tube and spat a mouthful of beer across the table, onto the spats of the rich kitri passing by.

Aw shit.

“Hey! You—”

Jeb flooded the room with his orange Myst. In the blink of an eye, every single thing in the room except him, Borg, and Smartass was held in place by the sheer pressure. If he so much as sneezed, he would implode every single person in the main room, and blow the roof off the building.

When conflict is unavoidable, it’s best to put on a show of unstoppable force before the opposing party commits to a course of action they couldn’t possibly act upon. Stopping people from writing checks their body can’t cash is an important part of diplomacy.

“My bad,” Jeb said, his tone saying ‘don’t even think about it’ as he made direct eye contact with the Big Bird look-alike. Only one of them had a Myst Core, and the kitri struggled mightily against Jeb’s magical chokehold, accomplishing nothing.

“Those look expensive.” Jeb reached into his satchel and took out a gold coin, dropping one on the table beside the frozen kitri whose spats he’d sullied, and throwing the innkeeper a silver for the food.

“We’re leaving,” Jeb said, standing. Borg followed suit, quick on the uptake. Smartass, on the other hand, was trying to down the rest of her juice, forcing Jeb to grab her by the ear and drag her away.

They hopped into the Jeep and Jeb nearly put the vehicle in gear out of habit before he rolled his eyes and put a Myst platform directly underneath, shooting them straight up into the atmosphere.

***Pikweya, level 24 Aristocrafter***

Pikweya stumbled out into the open air, desperate to get another look at the human.

He caught a glimpse of the human carriage before it shot straight up into the sky, disappearing into the blue like it had never existed.

His younger brother ran out after him, a little slower and a little more hesitant. The boy hadn’t reached level twenty yet, after all, so he was understandably hesitant to put himself in harm’s way.

“What was that?” Ri’peku asked.

“I think…that was Jeb’e’diah Trap’per,” Pikweya said, the foreign name uncomfortable on his tongue. He strained his neck to find the tiny dot in the sky.

“Really?” Ri’peku asked, his eyes widening, neck shaking with excitement before he glanced down at the beer-soaked spats. “I’m never taking these off!”

The young men didn’t notice the subtle ripples in the still pond beside the inn at the mention of the human celebrity’s name.

Beneath the surface, a water sprite named Neeka shot through the water, aiming for the triangle of stacked rocks that led to Elsewyr. She had news to deliver.

Jebediah Trapper was on the move! Her boss’s boss’s boss had given all of them an open-ended task to report to someone higher up if they should see—Ooh, a shiny FISH!

Fairy surveillance is more a matter of quantity over quality.

***Jebediah Trapper***

God, I hope that doesn’t come back to bite me in the ass, Jeb thought as they flew across the continent, shaking his head. How many times have I hoped things don’t bite me in the ass? Too many.

No, he’d handled it about as well as could be expected. No violence, no blood debts, nothing of that nature. They could have some time to cool off before he ever saw them again, and if they did see him again, they would know he wasn’t to be fucked with.

Jeb rubbed his temples.

At least he dodged the typical arrogant noble routine.

In the meantime…

The capital was still roughly six hours away. Six boring hours of staring down at the ruined landscape.

Even rocketing through the thin upper atmosphere had its limits, especially when the continent was at least twice as big as it was before the Stitching.

From the stratosphere, Jeb had plenty of reason to think about the Stitching. He could see it, plain as day. It really did look like a quilt sewn together with whatever rags were lying around.

A year wasn’t nearly enough for the land to adjust to the new weather patterns, so deserts stood next to dead jungles, and jungles stood next to deserts which were beginning to pack on more life.

They were blending together, but the differences between them were still stark, and probably would be for at least a decade before they really started fuzzing together into a unified whole.

Jeb could even spot a few places where previous Stitching had happened. There were a few mountains and canyons that ended abruptly, but the biome was seamless.

How and why? Jeb thought, eyes narrowed as he recalled the beginning of everything.

‘Earthlings! The gods of Pharos have touched your plane of existence and found it wanting. Your planet will be merged with their own, but you must be found worthy to join.’

Hmm… No word of why. The implication that they were trying to help earthlings through a little ‘tough love’ was utter bullshit.

So, why? More power? That’s usually the answer. How do they get power? The System, right? Vex’s offhand comments about the gods imply that they are powered by The System. What juices up The System? More people? More mass on the planet?

This was where Jeb’s understanding of physics got a little hazy. He was much smarter now than he had been when he joined the army, but he hadn’t taken the time to truly dive into the more advanced concepts.

The Fate dimension was, roughly speaking, the measure of change something could achieve, and obeyed arbitrary rules that seemed to stem from sapient thought.

Now, Jeb knew it was a dimension, and it was where The System did most of its work.

He also vaguely knew that space and time are warped by mass.

Was adding extra mass to the planet a way of turbocharging The System by compressing the fifth dimension using the warping effect of mass?

Why was the gravity of a planet ostensibly at least double Earth’s size still 1G?

That last one could be explained by a lower density core, except…there hadn’t been a burst of associated skin cancer, implying they had a magnetosphere keeping off harmful solar radiation.

Or, The System is compensating by giving us higher resistance to skin cancer.

Or, The System is making us just a bit stronger, to the point where it feels like 1G, but it isn’t.

Actual scientists must be having a field day, if Jeb could think of all those questions that needed answering off the top of his head, just from staring down at the stitched-together landscape.

The only things that Jeb knew for sure were these: The gods were assholes, and he’d be damned if he played their game.

***Six hours later***

“I spy…something white,” Smartass said.

“Is it Mestikos?” Jeb asked, spotting the white smudge on the landscape slowly getting closer.

“Aww, man!”

Jeb was about to spy something orange when a Myst-amplified voice rattled his bubble.

Attention unregistered flier, you are entering controlled airspace. Lower your altitude to…um…breathable heights, then follow the guide to the designated landing zone. Failure to comply will result in lethal force.

Ah.

Bureaucracy.

Chapter 3: Shoot the Messenger

They glided to a halt at the landing pad. Jeb had been expecting a marble runway, but it was more of a marble helipad. Everything in Mestikos was white and shiny. It actually hurt the eyes a little.

Jeb glanced at the twitching men and women holding spears rigidly in front of themselves like they were trying to ward off evil.

A helipad makes more sense in retrospect, since people who fly don’t necessarily need extra space to speed up or slow down.

Jeb’s elbow was hanging out the side of the window when whoever was in command came by to scope out the situation.

“Name and purpose of your visit?” a kitri asked, wielding a pen and notepad with all the grace and poise of a ballet dancer. In short: pretentious.

“Can I get a Wendy’s double baconator, fries and a root beer?” Jeb asked, adopting the same tone he would use when yelling at the speaker system outside a drive-through.

“Human jerky for me,” Borg said. Jeb raised a brow, glancing back at him. Borg shrugged.

“Candy!” Smartass shouted.

“Sweets and jerked human, if you’ve got any on tap,” Jeb added to his order, making a ‘jerk off’ motion with his hand.

The kitri’s eyes narrowed, his pen bending slightly.

Jeb sighed. He probably shouldn’t make too much fun of the bureaucrat. They had their own ways of making your life hell.

“My name’s Jebediah Trapper. I’m here to get a referral from the emperor before I…reach a climax.” Okay, I couldn’t help messing with him a little. Jeb’s rule against lying made it a little harder to poke fun at people, but that just made him more creative.

The kitri’s neck wiggled from…excitement? Jeb wasn’t great at reading kitri. He had a lot more experience with keegan and melas.

“I’ll relay your information. In the meantime, would you park your flying vehicle in the closest open bay?” he said, pointing to an oversized hangar abutting the helipad.

Jeb glanced into the dark of the shaded area and spotted a couple flying carriages, and a Harley with bigass chrome eagle wings, which was the most metal thing he’d seen since The System installed. There were flying horses, giant birds, and one stall that he thought was empty at first turned out to be populated by a flying rug.

If you had feelings, you’d probably be feeling subpar right about now, Jeb thought, patting his dashboard.

He turned on the Jeep and idled into an empty bay, parked it and got his duffle bag out of the back, slinging it over his shoulder while deeply inhaling the scent of flying manure.

Now what?

“It’s illegal to bring an undead into the capital without a permit,” another kitri with another notepad said, pointing at Borg.

“I’m not undead per se. More of a post-life cyborg.”

“Intelligent undead are even more expressly forbidden.”

“Duuur, braaains,” Borg said, staggering around and drooling.

The bureaucrat’s eyes narrowed.

How long are we gonna do this?

“Can we get a permit for my obviously not intelligent undead to be in the capital?”

“Of course. We’ll just need you to fill out a U-14-22-O Exclusion paper and fit your undead with a tracking device, as well as a flight registration for your vehicle.”

“Fine.”

“Fairies are also restricted.” He pointed at Smartass kicking her heels on Jeb’s shoulder. “You’ll also need to have your bag and clothes checked for any weapons before you’re allowed to roam the city freely.”

“Oh, come on!”

“You’ll also need to fill out a form for yourself.”

***Much paperwork later***

“I don’t know what soul-sucking feels like, but I imagine it’s hundreds of years of paperwork crammed into an instant,” Jeb said. That bureaucrat must have gotten back at them for the food order.

He was so tired, and this was coming from someone with a superhuman constitution.

“You passed that stupid test with flying colors,” Jeb said, glancing over at Borg as they waded through the sea of colorful aliens. They had run Borg through a battery of tests to see if he was intelligent or not.

“Oh, I just shut off my higher brain functions for that.” Borg shrugged.

“Ooh, ooh, look at that!” Smartass shouted, tugging on his ear, pointing indelicately at a massive man who looked like an anthropomorphic bison. “He’s so fuzzy!”

Jeb had seen one of them during the ill-advised raid on Vex’s lab. Brovis, I think they’re called. This one wasn’t quite as huge as the first one he’d seen, but they were big. The fluffy mane was probably contributing to it, but still…

Jeb spotted a race he’d never seen before. They had elongated heads, shark teeth, shiny, pebbly skin in bright colors. They looked a bit like salamanders.

Then Jeb saw another, and another, his System-upgraded brain swiftly noting the aliens and storing them for categorizing later, when he knew more about them.

The capital was a melting pot. The weather was temperate enough for multiple races to come together in such a way that everyone was just a little bit uncomfortable.

It was too cold for melas and keegan, the desert-dwellers; too warm for brovis, the ones who inhabited the frozen north; too dry for the salamander people who kept licking their eyeballs; and too wet for the kitri, who he heard snippets of complaints from.

All in all, everyone disliked living here, but since it was a place every race could tolerate, it had become the absolute center of trade and law on Pharos. Unlike Solmnath, humans were so far in the minority that he had only seen three since getting on the street.

Jeb craned his neck to look up at the towering buildings that lined the streets, marble edifices that couldn’t have possibly been achieved without magic.

Honestly waiting for our people to show them how it’s done.

The buildings were tall, but they didn’t compare with a good skyscraper. Actually, maybe human skyscrapers aren’t a great idea when they get ripped in half every once in a while by the Stitching.

Come to think of it, somehow the city seemed to be immune to the Stitching. Either that, or it rebuilt so quickly that the point was moot. Interesting….

“Borg, can you find us a place to stay?” Jeb asked.

“Aren’t you concerned that I’ll be turned away?” Borg asked.

“I’m expecting it,” Jeb said. “But when you do find a place, it’ll most likely be one where people don’t ask very many questions.”

“That tracks,” Borg said, wading into the crowd and disappearing in a matter of seconds.

Being a rare species and lugging around an undead and a fairy was already drawing a lot of attention. Jeb wanted a place to sleep where people were dedicated to staring at their navels.

Sure, it was a good way to get mugged, but it was also a good way to remain undisturbed. And after the hell of paperwork, Jeb was just looking for a place to flop onto a shitty mattress and pass out for a couple hours without anyone bothering him for a while.

Plus, it would probably be cheaper than a fancy hotel.

“Ooh, ooh, look at that!” Smartass pointed to a lumbering…thing with pale white fur and blue horns, with an almost snakelike body. It was bearing a backpack on its back and had no rider, so Jeb had to assume it was sapient.

“It’s not polite to point at people,” Jeb chided.

“How else am I supposed to point at them?” Smartass demanded. “Ooh, look at that!”

“What do you say we do something fun while we wait for Borg?” Jeb asked, wondering what Pharos had on tap for arcade games or fairgrounds. Sure, it might drain money like crazy, but keeping Smartass focused on any one thing was almost impossible.

“That’s…um… Why don’t we just wander around?” Smartass said, her face turning red. “I mean, unless you really want to go somewhere private...”

Jeb pinched her cheek.

“OWW!”

“Games. I’m talking about games!”

“How am I supposed to know that!” Smartass shouted, tears in her eyes as she rubbed her cheek. “Playing with a maiden’s heart like that… I hate you!”

Her wings buzzed against his ear for a moment as she took off, sailing into the distant sky…before gradually settling back down to the ground some thirty feet distant, seemingly winded.

“Stupid wings getting stupid small,” she panted as Jeb caught up with her. “How do you humans tolerate it?”

“We don’t have wings when we’re small.”

“Get away from me, I hate you!”

Jeb sighed, reaching into his pocket and pulling out some emergency hard candy, unwrapping the crinkly wrapper right next to where she had buried her face in her hands.

Smartass’s ears twitched, and she peeked out from between her fingers.

“It’s too bad you hate me, because this candy here is coffee flavored. Remember that one time you had a bottle of Starbucks coffee?”

Smartass took her hands away from her face, staring at the little ball of sugar, her mouth hanging open.

He held it out to her.

She hesitated.

Jeb cocked his head to the side. He’d never really seen Smartass hesitate at anything before, especially not at snatching candy out of his hand.

Then the moment was gone, and the coffee hard candy disappeared into her mouth.

“Your tribute is acceptable!” she said around the obstruction in her mouth while climbing back onto his shoulder.

“C’mon, let’s find a game or something,” Jeb said as they continued wandering the streets of the capital.

Smartass grabbed his shaggy hair like reins and took to steering him this way and that in the search for entertainment. They found a human shop that served soup and sandwiches, along with a couple shysters playing cup games and dice.

Jeb knew they were fixed, but Smartass was totally confident she could beat the system, so Jeb discretely paid the guy a couple silver to let her win. He probably should have let the man crush her hopes, because the best way to cure a gambling addiction was never to experience that first rush of winning.

But after that odd exchange, Jeb would rather have Smartass forget the entire thing.

Because it sounded like Smartass wasn’t entirely opposed to having sex with Jeb.

And that was just a WHOLE bag of worms that Jeb didn’t want to deal with.

She might be older than him, but the way she acted reminded him of a child, which made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up and caused him to nope right out of there.

He couldn’t help but notice that Smartass was beginning to fill out the front of her homespun shirt, too.

The androgynous, almost insectlike appearance of a fairy was beginning to fade into a more mammalian, human appearance.

Jeb had a theory about what was going on with his familiar: It seemed like as her Impact increased, she was biologically transitioning between insectoid and mammalian, which was making her go through a sort of puberty while she adjusted to having a wider range of emotions and desires.

She did mention older fairies being mean.

Insects don’t need a lot of emotions, and they don’t really experience regret when one of their own dies. They breed by the thousands and let nature sort it out. They’re simple. Eat, breed, do what feels right. It explained why Smartass didn’t particularly care that her entire village had been torched. They’re not psycho; they’re just biologically not capable of caring.

Mammals, especially humans, have a huge range of emotions and experience much greater continuity of thought and emotional investment.

When you only have one baby at a time, you’ve got to be emotionally invested, and plan far into the future.

So, while Jeb understood it was a completely alien shift in biology that was causing her to act like a teenager, and she was not actually a teenager…she was still acting like a teen.

And it weirded him out.

Maybe. MAYBE later, once she had a handle on her new body… But right now…he kinda felt like a pedo grooming a victim.

Maybe I should just wear a hat that says ‘you must be this tall to ride’, Jeb thought sourly. Of course Smartass wouldn’t get the joke, so it was pointless.

Smartass was fiercely dominating a toddler kickball game when Borg found them again.

“Yeah, eat that!” Smartass said, performing a sliding tackle into a two-year-old’s shins.

Jeb was debating pulling the plug on Smartass’s fun, as the alien mothers were giving him strange looks while Smartass threw up double peace signs and pranced around the bawling child.

Thankfully, Borg made the decision for him, tapping Jeb on the shoulder, his particular scent of decay wafting over him.

“I got us a place,” Borg said.

Oh, thank God.

“Smartass, stop teasing the children. We’ve got a place to stay.”

“I hope you all remember this day!” Smartass said to the assembled drooling children, obviously not listening to him. “The day it was proven once and for all that fairies are superior in every way imagina— Hey! Put me down!”

Jeb stalked onto the playing field and grabbed Smartass, hauling her away from the kickball field under his arm.

******

The ‘hotel’, such as it was, was smack in the center of a slum. The kind of place where the people who wanted to be there were the kind you should be afraid of. Where drug addicts and serial killers bump elbows in the night.

And then there was Jeb.

Not to sound arrogant, but I doubt your common serial killer would be able to make me get off the bed, Jeb thought as he kicked off his shoe and pegleg, face down on the grimy mattress that probably had bedbugs.

Meh.

Body did a pretty good job preventing biting insects from piercing your skin when you got into the thirties.

Jeb let out a tremendous yawn while Borg shut down in the corner of the room, curled into a tight ball. Smartass was pacing back and forth, glancing at the door over and over again, clenching and unclenching her hands. The little fae obviously wanted to get out and expend some more of her limitless energy.

“Don’t you do it,” Jeb said into the sheets. “I really don’t want to chase you down.”

Magical DMV had sucked the life out of him. Or maybe it was the one-day trip hauling a Jeep from one side of the continent to the other…

No, it was the DMV.

Jeb had never been this magically…puissant before. He felt like he could bench a castle with his Myst Core. The important part now was keeping it under control, so he didn’t accidentally squish someone else, or himself, or lose control and slip further down the path towards nuke central, population Jeb.

Right now, he just needed…he just needed a little nap before he went out and tried to haggle with the emperor over a cure...

…

KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK.

Jeb’s eyes snapped open as a heavy fist rapped against the door.

“Long was I out?” he grunted, pushing himself up.

“Thirteen minutes, twelve seconds,” Borg responded from the corner of the room.

“Gah.” He pushed himself off the mattress and reached a thread of Myst out, jostling the entire doorframe as he yanked open the door.

“Whaddya want?” Jeb asked the kitri, who carried a platter in front of him with a…

Jeb frowned as he recognized the Wendy’s packaging. A small stack of double baconators, hard candies, and pale strips of dried meat.

“Your order, Mr. Trapper? With compliments from the emperor. You’ve been added to the docket for Saturday, if that pleases you.”

Jeb could never be sure that Saturday was Saturday, because they were speaking a foreign language that was being translated by The System.

“How many days from now?”

“Three days, in the afternoon. Don’t worry about the details of your attendance. The emperor will Summon you.”

“Tidy,” Jeb said, snatching one of the double baconators off the tray before thinking better of it and just stealing the whole tray.

He smacked Smartass’s grabby fingers away from the human jerky and instead threw it over to Borg, who snatched it out of the air with mechanical precision before chewing on it with the first glimpse of real emotion that Jeb had seen from the zombot.

“The greater the sin, the greater the pleasure,” Borg whispered, shuddering in place.

“…Kay…” Jeb said before turning back to the delivery kitri and taking a bite of his greasy burger. “Where’d you guys get all this?”

“The human jerky is confiscated contraband. The hard candy, from a popular candy store on Main Street, and the Wendy’s burger is from one of the imperial chefs, a human whose Myst Core allows them to replicate anything they’ve eaten before.”

“Huh, I guess money and power can buy a lot,” Jeb said, handing Smartass a piece of fruit-flavored hard candy.

“Indeed. Do you have any other questions or requests before your meeting?”

“Yeah, is there a dress code?”

The kitri’s beak bobbed down and up as he scanned Jeb’s slightly dusty homespun from head to toe. “Yes. You’ll be assigned a valet until the engagement. Anything else?”

“The rest of my problems, I want to discuss directly with the emperor.”

“Very well,” the kitri said, making a quick bow before loping away, head bobbing in their ungainly walk.

Jeb floated back to the bed, unwrapping the next burger.

Once he had devoured them, he leaned back into the comfortably filthy covers, his eyes drifting closed with a sigh…

KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK.

Jeb’s eyes flickered open.

“Time?”

“Eight minutes, on the dot.”

Jeb levitated out of bed and opened the door.

The asshole who’d interrupted his sleep this time was a melas with fancifully gilt horns, wearing a white jacket with gold trim. Crisp shoulder lines.

“From Ms. Tekalis,” he said, holding out a piece of high-quality paper folded into an elegant letter.

He snatched the letter out of the melas man’s hand and shut the door in his face, floating back to the bed. Okay, a letter from Vresh, I can forgive, Jeb thought, fully aware of the burgeoning reasons he was okay with it. He was okay with that, too.

Jeb resolved to read it after his nap…

KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK.

“Twenty-one minutes, thirteen seconds,” Borg chimed in helpfully.

“Seriously, what the hell?” Jeb opened the door and found a piece of paper stabbed to the door with lettering on it. Jeb yanked it off, leaving the ostentatious dagger where it was.

We know why you are in the capital, and we have the capacity to help you with it, should you be amenable to providing aid with certain endeavors. If you wish to live, you can establish contact with us at—

“Boring,” Jeb said, crumpling it up and tossing it in the corner. “I didn’t live through the internet boom and not learn to recognize spam mail.”

“Yeah!’” Smartass agreed.

“Why are you agreeing?” Jeb asked. “As far as I know, you never touched a computer, let alone the internet.”

Smartass shrugged, her lips pursed.

Jeb went back to sleep.

KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK!

“Twelve minut—”

“Does everyone know where I’m staying!?” Jeb demanded, hauling the door open.

Standing in the hall was a woman with green-tinted skin, her hair the color of autumn leaves. A vision of pure perfection.

She was also completely naked.

“Nymph-o-gram for Jebediah Trapper,” she said with a smile.

“Umm…”

The nymph—Jeb assumed—exploited Jeb’s confusion and struck like a snake, leaning forward to place a kiss in the center of his forehead.

Scion, so good to see you getting out of that stuffy little city and seeing the world.

“AGH! Goddamnit!” Jeb said, reeling backwards.

The voice reverberated around inside his skull like broken glass in a balloon, barely containing it.

“Get out of my head!”

This is a pre-recorded message. Please hold your mewlings until the end of the offer.

I hear that you’ve gotten yourself into a bit of trouble, and the gods are trying to extort you into murdering me. For something as simple as removing a tumorous mass of spiritual essence. The nerve.

It would deeply disturb me to see you die, scion, and so I’m extending an offer to you: I’ll remove that cancer inside you for free. Honestly, you’d be doing me a favor.

Don’t answer now. Think on it. We’ve got time.

Jeb slipped and fell to his knees as the pressure inside his head fled, deflating like the aforementioned balloon. He panted there, staring at the stained wood floor for a moment as his adrenaline faded.

When he looked back up, the nymph was gone.

The human body makes thousands of potential cancer cells per day. You think a pair of tits and a headache would distract me from the wordplay!?

Of course, Jeb had to assume she knew that he knew that ‘cancer’ was a mislead. It paid to assume the ancient queen of the fae was probably smarter than him.

Jeb levered himself to his foot with a groan and hopped over to the bed, his head aching too much to trust himself with Myst.

Quite the popular one, aren’t I? Jeb thought, sitting back on the bed. He considered lying back down and trying to sleep again, but he realized that would only encourage the universe to send another messenger to interrupt his sleep.

Instead, he took Vresh’s letter off the pillow and opened it.

Mr. Trapper,

“Seems a bit formal.”

On behalf of the honorable Duchess Vresh Tekalis, you are formally extended an open invitation to visit Ms. Tekalis’s summer retreat outside the capital, Fere Talis.

We look forward to entertaining you.

The whole thing was pretty dry and straightforward, but there was one thing that stood out. And that was the lipstick mark at the bottom of the paper.

“WHY? Is she just trying to mess with my head? Why would you write a letter that dry, then put a kiss mark at the end of it!?”

Jeb scratched his head and set the letter back on the pillow, staring at it every now and then. Because she knew the lipstick would probably seal the deal. Shit.

Jeb already knew he wasn’t gonna be able to not bite that bait.

KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK!

“F—” Jeb slipped on his pegleg and marched to the door, slamming it open in frustration.

“Whatever it is, I don’t—”

The…thing in the doorway was tall—about seven feet, even hunched over as it was, peering in Jeb’s door.

It was vaguely humanoid, but seemed…off in ways, like the joints were placed based on guesswork and poor secondhand knowledge of what made a human body viable. The details of its body were unclear, as it was entirely wrapped in cloth, disguising whatever was inside the wrappings.

Jeb immediately flickered up a shield of Myst.

The creature laboriously ducked down and stepped inside the room, passing through Jeb’s Myst barrier with the sensation of water sizzling off a hot stove.

Jebediah.

Trapper.

The voice was a whisper that rattled his teeth and made every nerve in his body want to retreat from the aura of tangible fear that surrounded the thing.

Offer.

The creature reached into the wrappings it was cloaked in, retrieving a scroll made of thin blue leather, holding it out to Jeb. The scroll had its own tangible aura of dread.

Wish.

For.

Destruction.

That was the last straw. The pure wrongness of the creature made every inch of Jeb’s soul recoil violently away from it, his fight-or-flight kicked into full overdrive.

Jeb launched a lash of white-hot plasma through the creature’s midsection, cutting it in half and driving it backwards, back into the hall.

Awaiting…

The cloth wrapping around the creature deflated as its flesh turned into black smoke and sank through the floorboards of the hotel.

Response.

It winked out of existence, leaving a pile of rags outside their door.

“Jesus,” Jeb said, staggering backward, away from the blue scroll in the center of the room that seemed to have its own gravity.

“That was weird,” Borg agreed from his place in the corner of the room.

I’m just not gonna open the door next time. I’m gonna ignore any more knocks. Fuck them. I’m getting some sleep.

Jeb lay down, his eyes closed.

For a moment, all was right with the world.

Then a thought occurred to him, snapping his eyes open and wrenching him out of bed.

“Where’s Smartass?”

Chapter 4: Rebel Scum

“Hello?” Smartass said into the dark of the abandoned building whose address was written on the crumpled note she held in her hand. “Anybody here?”

There wasn’t much in the room aside from some old crates that smelled of mildew, and a faint flickering light from the docks that made all the shadows seem to come alive, following her around. Occasionally a breeze would roll in and the giant meat hooks hanging from the ceiling would ring against each other, creating a gloomy music.

Smartass straightened her shoulders, and assumed the attitude Jeb would have.

Alright, mean and jaded. Smartass passed her hand over her face, fixing a scowl onto it. These creepy meat hooks bore me with their…creepiness. Yeah. I’m tough as nails and stuff. Not scared at all.

Being scared was a completely new sensation and she DID NOT like it. She assumed acting like Jeb did when he was scared would help, but for some reason, she couldn’t manage to figure out how he turned it off. The fear just wormed its way into her stomach and lived there, rent free, as Jeb would say.

It didn’t escape her notice that if she were truly copying Jeb, she would have ignored the letter. Pftt. Jeb just doesn’t know what’s best for him sometimes. He’s not as experienced and wise as me, after all. When people offer help, you take it, duh.

“Hello? We got this letter.” She held the crumpled letter above her head.

“Something about helping Jeb out? He really needs some help, and if you could get the bomb out of his Impact, that would be great?”

Maybe I got the wrong abandoned meat processing plant? Smartass frowned, holding the letter up into the wavering lamplight from outside, just barely bright enough to make the white sheet of paper legible.

Nope, pretty sure I got the right place.

When she lowered the letter again, there was someone in front of her: a giant bird, looking down at her with its oversized beak that could snip her in half as surely as a pair of shears.

Smartass let out an unintentional yip as she leapt back from the kitri, hands raised in a traditional fairy-fu chopping stance.

“Peace, fairy. I have no ill will towards you or your owner.”

Owner!? Smartass spluttered for a moment before she began the long process of explaining to this ignoramus about power dynamics and in light of that, exactly who owned who, nearly missing the continuation of his speech.

“The bomb in Jebediah’s Impact is well within our means to remove, little fairy.”

“Oh, good. Because if he doesn’t get that taken care of soon—” Smartass made an exploding sound while expanding her hands apart. “The whole city could be wiped off the face of Pharos. Maybe worse. It’s really stressing me out.”

The kitri’s breath hitched for a moment. “Yes…we are aware of the urgency.”

“Phew. So you guys will get it plucked out tonight, then?”

“We count among our number some of the most powerful healers and agents of divine miracles. Piwaki Yiki and Kiyaku Uapi, to name a few. While it may be within our means, our assistance is not without cost.” The kitri rubbed his leather bird-fingers together, the universal symbol of money. “It is a rather expensive proposition you ask of us, and we will need some manner of recompense.”

“I didn’t wanna do this, but you leave me no choice,” Smartass said, reaching into her pocket and brandishing her secret weapon.

The kitri’s neck went stiff.

The Laffy Taffy she’d saved from the vending machine raided a week prior slowly sagged in front of the kitri’s perplexed expression.

“This. Is a Laffy Taffy. Basically the most intense sugar rush you can legally acquire. It makes snorting pollen off a stripper’s genitals feel as boring as Sunday mass,” she said, stroking the bright red packaging lovingly. It’s breaking my heart to part with you, dear Laffy Taffy, but to keep Jeb—and more importantly, myself—alive, I need to make some sacrifices. I’ll always remember your scent.

“We don’t take payment in candy,” the kitri said, his tone flat.

“Oh, thank the gods,” Smartass said, a wave of relief flooding her. The relief was so overwhelming that it shattered her week of self-control and she devoured the Laffy Taffy on the spot.

“So whaddya want?” she said around the wad of chewy sugar in her mouth. “Blood, babies?”

“The emperor is a fraud,” the kitri said, his neck stiff with anger. “He has usurped his position from his father, the true emperor during the battle of Garenth Falls, falsely claiming his death and imprisoning him without cause in the deepest dungeon in all of Mestikos, hidden away from the world under lock and key, while he treats the administration of the empire like a child’s game.”

The kitri went on a long diatribe about how poorly the current emperor was bungling every aspect of governance, which went straight over Smartass’s head.

I’m big enough to admit it.

And he ended the tirade with a note about his sister, who was apparently a Damsel kept as a power-boosting trophy by the despicable cretin.

“Uh huh, uh huh,” Smartass said, nodding along with the explanation while the kitri exhausted his avalanche of vitriol. Once he had finally settled down, she adopted Jeb’s Resting Bastard Face and asked the obvious question:

“And why should I care?” None of it was more important than a Laffy Taffy, after all.

Turns out, a kitri splutter of indignation is more of a ‘honking’ type situation.

Good to know, Smartass thought, taking another bite of sinfully sweet and sour chew.

“You should care because we’re all children of the empire. It’s our responsibility to make sure it carries on for our children, and our children’s children.”

“Fairy,” Smartass said, poking herself in the chest with her thumb.

“Is there… Is there someone else I could speak to? I understand that Jebediah felt the need for secrecy when he sent you, but this conversation is getting—”

“Nope, Jeb threw your letter away after calling it ‘spam mail’, so I don’t think he’s coming. I came here by myself!”

“What’s ‘spam mail’?” the kitri asked.

“I don’t…know.”

The kitri shook his head. “You said Jebediah isn’t coming?”

“Smartass!” A distant voice echoed across the sky.

“Not for you, anyway,” she said with a shrug.

“Then take this,” the kitri said, passing her a flat disk of metal that seemed to be grown from bismuth. “If you bring it into the emperor’s palace and leave it in the east wing, you will have saved the true emperor of Mestikos, and earned Jeb’s salvation.”

“Neat,” Smartass said, hefting it over her shoulder. That sounded like a really simple deal.

“Waaait a minute,” Smartass said, looking back up at the bird with some of her newfound ‘critical thinking’ skills. “This isn’t gonna blow up on me, is it?”

“Of course not. It is a bomb, to be sure, but all it does is release a magnified pulse of Myst collected from the great escape artist Kiwifui. We’ve discovered that the true emperor is held against his will below the east wing. That spell-bomb will unlock every door, loosen every restraint, weaken every binding enchantment in a two-block radius. The true emperor is strong, and should have no trouble securing his own freedom afterwards.”

“It’s not gonna kill anyone?”

“No.”

Phoo. Smartass felt a complex wave of weird feelings. Normally, she would have just been disappointed it wasn’t going to blow up, but mixed in there was a…heavy sigh/relaxation feeling. Something that put her at ease, because the bomb wasn’t going to blow up on her.

And a nagging sensation that Jeb was going to yell at her for something. That emotion felt like little biters gnawing at her guts, and she didn’t like it.

So many weird feelings all at once!

Smartass did what had worked with the feelings so well up until recently: She ignored them.

“Smartass!” She heard Jeb’s voice calling again, this time closer. The achy feeling in her gut redoubled, and suddenly she wanted to hide all of this from Jeb at any cost, if it would make that achy feeling in her stomach go away.

“Now, let me show you how to use—”

“It’s fine, Igottogobye!” Smartass turned and ran, tucking the heavy disk under her arm.

“Spin the dial to set the timer!” the kitri yelled after her. “Only when—”

“Jeez, I got it,” she muttered as the fancily-dressed bird’s voice faded into the distance. Acting like she’d never handled a dial before.

When was the last time I handled a dial, anyway? Hmm…well, it’s probably fine.

Smartass tried to shove the bismuth disk in her oversized front pocket as she entered the alleyway, but there was simply too much candy in there to fit it.

“Smartass, come out here right now!”

“Eep!” Jeb sounded mad.

In an act of unconditional love and pure sacrifice, and definitely not because she was terrified of getting caught, Smartass turned her candy pocket inside out, dumping her precious sweets into the street before shoving the disk into the place they had occupied, then packing a pitiful handful of hard candies around it to hide its shape.

Farewell, she thought, eyes brimming with tears as she left her innocence behind, in the shape of a pile of candy the size of a man’s head. She dried her face, then headed towards the sound of Jeb’s voice.

***Jeb***

Jeb gave up the slums as a possible hiding place, then went to where Borg was searching, walking along the street beside the docks, looking for the errant fairy.

“Smartass!” Jeb’s voice rang through the evening air…only, Jeb hadn’t yelled.

“Why are you doing that?” Jeb asked, landing on the street behind Borg.

“I figured using your voice would make Smartass more likely to respond,” Borg responded, unfazed by Jeb’s sudden arrival.

I guess I can see that, but…

“Why are you wearing my clothes and walking like me?”

Borg had adopted the hitching step that Jeb carried as he trudged down the street, calling Smartass’s name in Jeb’s voice.

Borg looked down at the homespun shirt he was wearing and shrugged. “Research?” he offered.

“You’re reminding me of Lando Calrissian. Don’t do that.”

“You’ve put it in terms I can understand, thank you.” Borg loosened up his leg and began walking normally, continuing to call for Smartass with Jeb’s voice.

Jeb’s eyes narrowed in thought. I think I’m gonna use Borg as a guinea pig for new spells. He had to fine tune some spells that weren’t necessarily force and heat, and the zombot seemed like an excellent target.

“Young master, please wait!” a kitri cried, chasing a rather well-dressed bird-person through the streets, flinching away from the puddles and the occasional land mine dropped by the city’s beasts of burden as he hurried to catch up.

Jeb and the ‘young master’ shared a glance before the kitri put his head down, covering his features with a silk hood.

What the hell is that kid doing out here? Jeb wondered. You don’t get a lot of rich kids at the docks. Matter of fact, you don’t get a lot of kitri at the docks at all; it was mostly those brightly-colored gecko people, who had somewhat webbed feet and enjoyed the moisture close to the ocean.

Hmm…

Jeb fixed his head back on straight as he and Borg kept looking for Smartass. A few minutes later, they came across the fairy losing at dice against children…badly.

“NOOO!” she shrieked, clutching her head as she lost another piece of candy to the up-and-coming confidence child.

“Yo, Smartass,” Jeb said, tapping her shoulder.

“AIII!” Smartass gave a shriek and raised her hands in a chopping motion.

“You startled me! How could you be so cruel!? My heart!”

Jeb decided to cut to the chase. “Smartass, were you meeting with rebels?”

“Whaaaat?” Smartass’s eyes drifted away from him as she skirted the line of telling a lie. “He never said he was a rebel.”

“Lesson one about rebels,” Jeb said, holding up a finger. “In real life, they never call themselves rebels.”

Jeb held up another finger. “Lesson two. Always demand payment up front from rebels. Their promises for payment are always predicated on the event that they win their insane gamble, which is just bad business.”

“Lesson three,” Jeb said, ticking off another finger. “Rebels are—”

“Always the good guys,” Borg said.

“Nnnooo,” Jeb said, eyes sliding towards Borg, who looked genuinely baffled. “Making the good guys the underdogs is a plot device to maintain tension. In the real world, true good guys are…rare, and even less likely to compete over the throne. More often, it’s two opposing factions of bad guys.”

“So Amanda and Brett are bad guys?” Borg asked.

“They’ve got a serious hedonistic streak, so I can see how they might corrupt easily, but it’ll be their policies that define whether or not they— Goddamnit, I didn’t come here with the intention of talking politics with you!”

“How did you know?” Smartass asked quietly.

“Because the letter I threw in the corner of the room was gone,” Jeb responded, kneeling down into the filthy street to be closer to eye level with the fairy.

“Smartass, the reason I tossed the letter aside was because it had no specific details about my situation, nor was the messenger able to risk being caught. That implies the party who sent the letter didn’t know enough to be specific, nor did they have enough power to move freely through the city. Ergo, someone who didn’t actually have the power to help me, like a rebel. There could have been other explanations, but rebel was high up there on my list.”

“But he said they could remove the bomb from you!” Smartass whined.

“Did you mention the bomb first?” Jeb asked.

Smartass’s gaze slid away from his. “I feel like a stupid fart,” she said, deflating.

“Everyone feels like a stupid fart…” Jeb thought back to high school. “...eventually.”

“Even you?” she said, looking up at him with watering eyes.

Jeb sighed, offering Smartass his hand. “Let me tell you about the three girls I had crushes on in high school and the Valentine’s Day I wish I could take back.”

***Smartass***

Yess, I have successfully distracted Jeb from asking any more nosy questions, Smartass thought, hiding her grin in her sleeve as she half-listened to Jeb’s story about ‘peacocking’ and shamelessly handing out cheap candy to girls he liked when he already had a girlfriend, with every intention of making them into a harem.

It’s a good thing those people aren’t rebels, because they’re totally trying to free the real emperor, so that makes them not rebels, like, by default. Whatever the inverse of rebels are.

And THAT means they really can help Jeb remove that bomb!

I am so freakin’ smart.

***Jeb***

“So anyway, I used that line, and I didn’t really think about how cringy it really was until I read that exact same combination of words on a woman’s Myspace page about her boyfriend trying to pressure her into sex, and once I had an objective view of it, I realized how shallow and manipulative I really was. Nowadays, I try to be…more nuanced when I manipulate people.”

Jeb shuddered in remembered disgust at his own antics.

“What’s Myspace?” Borg asked.

“Like Facebook, but less successful. This was in two thousand and nine, so Myspace was still a thing,” Jeb clarified as they marched up the stairs of their hotel and into the hallway that led to their hotel room.

“I see.”

The party of three came to a halt when they spotted a melas staring into their room. The man was just staring, standing still, as he gawked through the open door, which neither Jeb nor Borg had left open.

Okay… That’s odd, Jeb thought, spinning up some Myst as a proto-shield, just in case. Better safe than shrapnel.

“Hey there. Something wrong with our room?” Jeb asked as they approached.

“This is your room?” the melas asked, turning to Jeb. No horrifying disfigurement or empty eye sockets—so far, so good.

“Yes?”

“I think you might have a problem,” the melas said, brushing past them as he left.

Jeb carefully peeked his head around the doorframe, not sure of what to expect. Best-case scenario was a prank, or a kid stole his furniture. Worst-case scenario was a bunch of pissed-off reapers or an eldritch horror.

With that in mind, Jeb was surprised when he spotted the two piles of ash around the blue scroll radiating ominous vibes.

One pile had a small knife and a set of rough-sewn clothes sized for a small man or an underfed teen.

The other pile had expensive kitri clothes, and a golden medallion that identified an imperial valet.

“Ssssssssshit,” Jeb cursed, edging his way into the room, taking the long way around the blue scroll rather than stepping over it.

“Nobody touch the scroll. I’ve got a hunch it disintegrates people.”

“Roger,” Borg said.

“It seems fine,” Smartass said, picking it up and inspecting the ominous object.

Jeb’s heart stopped for an instant before he swatted it out of her hand. Neither of them disintegrated, so that was good, but Jeb still wanted to keep the scroll on the No-Touchies blacklist until he knew for sure what actually happened. Maybe it just wasn’t hungry at the moment.

“We’re in trouble,” Jeb said, running his hand through his hair. “Fuck my life.”

“Why’s that?” Borg asked.

“Because high-ranking imperial valets are usually the children of someone important getting experience in the world of politics, and it doesn’t look good when they turn to ash in your hotel room while you were out meeting with rebels.”

“Ah. Yes, I can see that,” Borg said, nodding. “You’re in deep shit.”

Thank you, Borg, for stating the obvious.

Smartass bit her lip. Felt bad about getting someone killed and causing trouble for Jeb, maybe?

Jeb scratched his head.

I need friends and I need to get ahead of this. They could run, which would make them look more guilty and inevitably see them chased out of the capital, or they could take a gamble. As long as the dead valet wasn’t too crazy-important, he could get it swept under the rug by rubbing elbows with very important people.

Namely, Emperor Pikaku and Vresh Tekalis.

Jeb groaned, went over to the bag at the foot of his bed and started pulling out his writing supplies before drafting a couple letters on the nearby floor.

“Don’t touch the scroll!” Jeb shouted at Smartass, who was edging closer to the treated blue leather.

“Just wondering what skin this is made of. Do you think demon skin or eldritch abomination skin? It’s probably not human, unless there are blue humans somewhere I don’t know about?”

“Not interested,” Jeb said, pondering the best way to frame this as a failed attack by an unknown enemy without lying. A moment later, he dipped the pen in the ink and started writing.

To whom it may concern:

The blue scroll may disintegrate people. I regret to inform the state that the valet assigned to me is believed to be a pile of ash in the middle of my room, having touched the scroll out of curiosity, arriving at my room while I was not present.

I humbly request that the state send an expert in disposing of harmful artifacts of a potentially divine or eldritch nature.

Jeb tweaked the letter a few times in order to make himself sound as blameless as possible before he started working on his second letter.

Dear Vresh,

How’s it going?

I’m fine, too.

Say, how does the aristocracy avoid culpability for accidental dead people in your hotel room?

Jeb crumpled the letter up and flash-burned it in his fist with plasma, because it was absolutely terrible. This was the kind of thing that should probably be said in person.

Well, I do have three days before the meeting with the emperor. I can visit her directly. Jeb rubbed his temples.

His reunion with Vresh was going to be nowhere near as good as he had been imagining. He wasn’t going to ride in on a white horse and offer her the balm to her worldly problems in the form of his penis, before riding off again into the sunset with a tearful farewell.

Instead, he was going to drop a heaping pile of extra problems on her plate, and quite possibly involve her in a scandal.

Is that something I really wanna do to her?

Jeb’s eyes caught the crimson lipstick on the opened letter beside his pillowcase.

You know what? I am gonna do that to her, because that lipstick kiss-mark at the bottom was way too good of a hook to go unpunished.

“It doesn’t smell like human leather,” he heard Borg say, and glanced up from his writing to see the cyborg with his nose less than an inch away from the rolled-up piece of blue death, inhaling deeply. “You can tell because the balance of salts is way off. I’d actually guess eldritch, because demon skin has more sulfur in it. This smells faintly of ozone and void.”

Borg inhaled deeply and smacked his lips a bit, like some kind of wine connoisseur trying to roll the flavor around in his mouth.

“How many times do I have to tell you guys to STAY AWAY FROM THE SCROLL!?” Jeb shouted. It was like he’d been left in charge of a bunch of toddlers locked in a room with a sensitive explosive.

Chapter 5: Swanky

***Emperor Pikaku, Uniter of the Continent, Ruler of Mestikos, level 328***

“Water stress among the brovis continues to ease as the reservoirs do their job, and we expect to see a return on investment within a few short years. The Inulak people continue to insist that the harbor a thousand miles northwest of them is polluting their waters, and demand a cessation of activity…”

Pikaku took his job as seriously as possible. Maximum benefit for the most people, but gods, it was dry sometimes.

“What was that last one?”

“A valet assigned to one of your petitioners was disintegrated by an unidentified artifact. A seer has determined that the petitioner is blameless, but we’ve taken the liberty of canceling the meeting.”

“Who was it?”

“One Jebediah Trapper.”

“Oh, him!” Pikaku said, his neck shaking a bit in amusement as he recalled the man in question, easily a contender for the title of ‘Most Powerful Human on Pharos’.

Suddenly an evil thought struck him, and his eyebrows rose in devious glee.

“You know what? Don’t cancel the meeting. I would like to see what this human needs our assistance with.”

“As you wish,” his assistant said, making a note on her paper.

“And he’s going to need a new valet, isn’t he?”

“Sire?”

“Is my nephew still being a twat?”

“I…um, have difficulty responding to that,” the assistant replied.

“Don’t worry, he is. My sister’s been talking my ear off about how little he takes after his father,” Pikaku clarified. “I think a little adversity would do that child good, and Jebediah Trapper seems to be some kind of walking adversity magnet.”

“Sire, the previous valet is ash now.”

“Doesn’t get much more adverse than that.”

***Piwaki, level 20 Mystic Cosmetic Healer***

“But…why a healer?” Piwaki’s keegan friend Kolusk asked, confusion evident on his face. “That’s kind of…boring, don’t you think?”

“Not to mention gross,” Jeresh chimed in as she walked beside him. “Your daily life becomes nothing but blood and puss.”

The three of them cut a strange figure as they walked through the Imperial Academy, a place where friendships were largely among the same species. Among all these teenagers filled to the brim with hormones, Piwaki, Kolusk and Jeresh were some of the most visually stunning specimens of their species…

But not to each other.

To each other, they looked awkward/skeletal/fat.

It started as a joke that the three most attractive students in the academy hung out to escape all the positive attention…then it sort of came true on its own.

“Think, my friends. Think.” Piwaki tapped a claw to the side of his head. “Are healers not the most highly-paid profession? A healer does spend their time around gross things, but only a handful of hours a day at most, and that’s a small price for the pay…”

Piwaki closed his beak so that he didn’t drool onto the ground, imagining all the cash and tailfeather that went with it.

“I’m perfectly comfortable with living the rest of my life perfectly comfortably.”

“Mystic Daredevil is better,” Kolusk said, flat out.

“You’re gonna wind up a smear on the marble somewhere,” Piwaki said with a shrug.

“Boys, boys,” Jeresh said, shaking her head. “Always thinking with your dicks. Obviously, an Inheritor Class is better.”

“Oh sure, let me just whip up an ancestor to will me a portion of their Impact. Oh wait, I’m the fifth son of a minor house!” Piwaki said, his neck wobbling in scorn.

“Your mom’s the emperor’s sister.”

“But my DAD is an adventurer,” Piwaki said, shuddering. His father’s feathers were always covered in dust. He had a brief flashback to his father’s ‘training regimen’ that he was fairly sure was just a hazing. No, thank you.

Why would she ever decide to marry a Mystless Steelclaw Brawler? It wasn’t because of the man’s Class or social status. And if his social graces were anything to go by, that couldn’t have been it, either.

I can only assume my father is exceptional in the roost. Hopefully I inherited some of that.

“Frankly, I think the emperor gave him a title just so he wouldn’t be a complete embarrassment to the family.”

For some reason, Piwaki’s older brothers seemed to enjoy the workout torture, sharpening their claws, lifting, running, until they looked like some kind of primordial feathered predator from the ancient past.

Bleh. No, thank you.

Piwaki was the smart one, and he was going to prove it with his build.

Healer was a standard Class available to anyone who made the effort to learn a bit about anatomy and patch up a moderate to major wound before they turned level twenty.

Cosmetic Healer required even more specific knowledge of how to alter someone’s appearance surgically. It was an unheard-of class until some humans with a profession known as ‘plastic surgeons’ were reported. This was mostly ignored as an interesting, but ultimately useless Class, but Piwaki had seized on the idea and consulted a human who had practiced.

According to them, the practice had become quite lucrative, especially among the rich and famous.

To become a Cosmetic Healer, one must surgically alter someone’s appearance in a believable way before level twenty, and aid in their healing.

That was a horrible experience, but worth it.

To become a Mystic Cosmetic Healer simply required the user to use their Myst in some way to assist the process. Piwaki’s Myst allowed him to keep his experimental test subject stress-free throughout the surgery and healing process, which must have helped enough, because he got the class.

Now that the rest of his life had been paved in gold and tailfeathers, Piwaki really had nothing to do but lie back and enjoy the bounty the world had to offer him…

“Piwaki Apiyeki?” a voice called from the side. It sounded too solid, too forceful to be a student, and it halted the three of them in their tracks.

“…Yes?” he asked, turning to find himself staring up at a towering melas wearing the emperor’s colors.

“You’ve been randomly selected to replace an imperial valet,” the melas said, holding out a letter with his uncle’s seal on it.

“What happened to the previous one?” Piwaki asked, internally cursing the inconvenience as he took it out of the powerful man’s hand. It made no sense to refuse, despite the trouble it would put him through. You didn’t not accept a task from the emperor.

“Disintegrated in the line of duty.”

“Wha—”

“Best of luck.” The melas vanished in a puff of foul-smelling smoke.

Kolusk leaned down and whispered in his ear. “Bet you wished you were a Mystic Daredevil right about now, dontcha?”

***Jeb***

Jeb stood in front of a massive wrought iron gate outside a compound that screamed money. The hedges had fantastical designs carved into them, and from the gate, he could see the edge of what looked like a brilliant blue swimming pool.

Picturing Vresh in a swimsuit got the blood pumping. There were a couple things about the six-and-a-half-foot-tall Amazonian melas woman that were hard to ignore.

“How’s my hair?” Jeb asked, running his fingers through his hair one more time.

“Clumpy, and thinning,” Smartass said from his shoulder, her heels tapping against his collarbone.

Thanks for that, Jeb thought sourly as he reached out and pulled the chain beside the gate.

Dingggg….Dongggg…..

“You think it would be rude to give myself a trim on her front porch?” Jeb asked, feeling his scratchy stubble with his thumb.

“Yes.”

“Yeah, I thought so too.” Jeb sighed, lowering his hands.

He was so caught off-balance by the faceless dead valet that he’d rushed right over without bothering to get cleaned up, and now he was regretting it.

At least he’d had the sense to leave Borg at home to guard the scroll. Jeb didn’t really care one way or another if Borg got himself annihilated; he just didn’t want the creature hovering while he talked to Vresh.

He took Smartass because the emotional powder keg simply couldn’t be trusted not to get herself killed or kidnapped if he left her on her own.

Priorities, I guess.

About fifteen seconds went by before Jeb saw a butler-looking melas in white and gold come around the bend in the hedge that concealed a large portion of the main property.

“Greetings,” the melas said, his gaze flicking up to Smartass for an instant before resting on Jeb’s face, hair, dusty jacket and weather-damaged, muddy prosthetic.

“May I ask the nature of your visit?” he asked.

“I got this letter inviting me to Fere Talis,” Jeb said before pausing. “Is it pronounced ‘Feh-reh’ or ‘Fair’?”

“You’re Mr. Trapper?” the butler said in a tone that spoke volumes about betrayed expectations.

“Yes. Did you think I’d be taller?”

“Ah, no.” The butler hastily course-corrected his tone and opened the gate with a slight bow. “Follow me.”

Jeb allowed himself to rubberneck as he gawked at the fixtures, from the beautiful mosaic in the freakin’ floor, all the way to the gilded nude melas statues holding up spinning spheres of marble, kept moving by the fountains that welled up out of them and into the pool.

Ritzy.

It was a little…empty, though.

That always struck Jeb as counterintuitive. You got an amazing place to throw a pool party—why not? Like how the ultra-rich—back when they existed—had amazing homes they never set foot in. What was that all about?

Then again, you can’t constantly be throwing pool parties.

The butler was seemingly numb to it, his head fixed on straight as he guided Jeb along the edge of the pool and around to a side door in the mansion that rose mountainous above the forest of hedges.

Jeb entered through a humble servant’s entrance that was a lot more homey than he was expecting, with a dirty rug, coat rack and shoes by the door. He was guided out into the main lobby, which was far more spectacular. Light filtered from a stained glass mural above him, reflecting off the matte floor in a way seemingly designed to diffuse the brilliant colors into the atmosphere and force people into a happy mood.

He wasn’t given much time to gawk before he was guided up a flight of velvet stairs, finally coming to a halt in front of a pair of solid double doors that looked like a lot of pygmies died cutting down the huge tree it must’ve been carved from.

Swanky.

All this time, he’d been expecting Smartass to go apeshit, but when he glanced at the fairy riding on his shoulder, she was slack-jawed, staring at everything in wide-eyed wonder. It occurred to Jeb that fairies in general can’t have nice things, and the child-ridden orphanage was the fanciest place she’d ever visited.

The butler knocked, a polite two raps.

“Enter,” Vresh’s voice called.

At this point, Jeb had been letting his imagination get carried away from him wondering what ‘entertain’ meant, but he didn’t fail to notice the tone of Vresh’s voice. It was stiff and tightly controlled with an edge to it, like she was…angry?

The double doors opened, and Jeb got his answer.

“Introducing one Jebediah Trapper, here to visit Ms. Tekalis,” the butler said, bowing and stepping aside.

The room was dominated by a massive ovoid table that seemed to be poured obsidian. Around it were about six melas who bore a vague familial resemblance to each other. There was an obvious tension between them, in the way they held their stiff posture, their seating positions.

There was one younger melas sitting by Vresh’s side, and three older ones sitting around a goateed fellow who looked something like The Darkness from Legend.

Vresh and the other four had a gulf between them that was more than just distance. There was conflict at play here.

“Jeb? What are you doing here?” Vresh asked with a frown, and Jeb’s skin went cold as everyone turned to stare at him. The oldest melas had the slightest crook on his lips as he appraised Jeb’s rather poor appearance.

The pieces came together.

Ah, damnit, I got catfished. They were trying to use him to embarrass her and weaken her social status among her family. Well, no choice but to play ball.

“I think I got catfished by a letter from your uncle.” Jeb nodded towards the older melas as he entered the room, approaching Vresh’s side of the table and grabbing the seat to her right before plopping himself down beside her. He wanted his metaphorical position to be extremely clear.

“If so, he’s got suspiciously good taste in lipstick,” Jeb muttered.

“Oh my, the letter that brought you here wasn’t legitimate?” Smartass whispered, pinching his ear vindictively. “Where’s all that condescending attitude from before? Too proud to admit you were blinded by that hussy’s enormous—”

“That seat is reserved for Ms. Tekalis’s fiancé,” a rather slender melas woman with greying hair said, giving Jeb the stink eye.

First rule of confidence: always double down.

“Why, is he coming?” Jeb asked, craning his neck to glance around the well-appointed room. “I don’t see him. If he shows up, I’ll give it back.”

“Peace, Brinda. We have to assume the human hasn’t spent his life learning melas etiquette. Besides, Vresh doesn’t have a fiancé. That’s why we’re here, after all. That little matter of succession. I’m sure a young woman like you should have no trouble securing one. Perhaps they’ve seen too many of your public executions and have gone to ground. Or is it perhaps a defect in character?”

The older melas in the center spoke, his body still as the grave as he stared at Vresh. All except his thumb, which traced the scrollwork on the edge of his goblet while he waited for Vresh’s response.

What’s the play, here? Jeb thought, scanning the members of the dinner party while he tried to figure out what kind of shit he’d just stepped into.

Smartass was right; he’d been blinded by wishful thinking and boobs. Now he was in the deep end and didn’t know how to swim, looking for any sort of life preserver he could get his hands on.

Jeb sank into his thoughts while Vresh gave a cold response to her uncle’s barb.

Okay, we have to assume that not everyone in this room is one hundred percent for or against Vresh. If that was the case, there would be no fancy dinner party. One side would simply have declared victory already. So, who is the neutral-ish party here? Who are they trying to sway?

Jeb’s gaze landed on the melas man sitting two spaces away from Vresh’s uncle, a portly fellow with a chin similar to Vresh’s, who was watching the proceedings with great interest between bites of carefully cubed steak-like substance.

There’s my bitch. That had to be the guy who was still on the fence, and if so, then the name of the game of this entire dinner party was to make a good impression on him.

“Mr. Trapper?”

“Eh?” Jeb grunted, glancing up at the butler who’d snuck up on him.

“Would you like anything?”

“A glass of water, a bowl of water, and whatever he’s having,” Jeb said, nodding to the neutral party. Jeb wasn’t sure if it was insulting to copy someone else’s choice, but if it was, he would feign ignorance. Otherwise, it showed that he deferred to the man’s choice, which usually made people happy.

And it did smell good.

“Right away,” the butler said with a bow before turning to leave.

“Oh, and some juice,” Jeb added before the man could get too far away, motioning to Smartass, who was inspecting the faradan silverware floating above the table with sparkling eyes.

“Of course.”

“So, Mr. Trapper, tell us about your companion. I’m sure we could all use a break from more serious topics.” Vresh’s uncle spoke.

Bit of a leading question there, Jeb thought, since fairies were technically illegal. And ‘more serious’? Did he just put me and mine in the ‘less serious’ box?

“Well, I met Smartass in the Impossible Tutorial. Me and several other humans pried the secrets of Myst out of them via trade. Her village sold me the secrets of Myst for M&Ms. It’s a kind of human candy.”

“I suppose that’s the reason corpses have been found in the Death Wilds with a pocketful of candy,” the uncle murmured.

Smartass dropped the bright blue fork she’d been studying at the mention of her village, her eyes wide as she gasped.

“They’re all dead!” she exclaimed, her eyes watering for an instant before she jumped off the table and ran away, bawling at full volume, leaving the entire table speechless.

Talk about a delayed reaction. Might’ve called Guinness, if they still existed, Jeb thought, watching her go. He weighed his loyalty to Vresh against his debt to Smartass and sighed, rising from his chair.

“I’ll be right back. Nobody spit in my food.”

Jeb spent a minute tracking down Smartass to where she was hiding under an ornate cabinet, curled into a ball, her eyes streaming with tears.

“You wanna talk about it?” Jeb asked, peering into the tiny dark space. “It’s gotta be painful growing new pieces of yourself that you never had before. I just want you to know that you’ve still got friends who’ll be there for you while you go through it.”

95% cribbed from other consolation speeches I’ve heard before, but no less true.

“Go away.” Her voice trembled from the darkness.

“You wanna go home?” he asked.

“No.”

“You wanna be alone?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay, I’ll come check on you in a little while before we go, and you’re always welcome to join us again, or I can take you home.”

“’Kay.”

Jeb stood up and walked back to the table, where his food had arrived in his absence, notably at a different seat than he’d been in before.

Ah well, Jeb thought, sitting down and grabbing the bowl of water.

“Welcome back, Mr. Trapper. There seems to be some confusion as to whether you were in the Impossible Tutorial at all, seeing as you were never featured with the other winners originally,” her uncle said.

“He was,” Vresh said. “I was assigned to shove him and his friends back into the Tutorial when they escaped containment. We missed each other by minutes.”

“Oh, I didn’t know that,” Jeb said, glancing over at her as he grabbed his bowl of water and dumped it over his head, catching the water with a bowl of telekinetic Myst wrapped around his head. He then ran a pair of telekinetic comb-scissors of Myst through his hair, giving himself a more no-nonsense military cut, depositing the loose hair into the water sloshing around on top of his head. A moment later, he repeated the process with his face, shaving with a razor made of pure Myst before depositing the water back in the bowl.

All told, Jeb’s magical whore bath took about fifteen seconds, and it seemed to impress the four nobles. Or disgust them. He wasn’t quite sure. There was a decent amount of staring involved. Did he have to use a high enough concentration of Myst to level the entire mansion to cut his hair?

No.

But it made an impression.

“I’m both relieved and disappointed I didn’t get to meet you earlier,” Jeb said with a chuckle, sliding the bowl of water away from himself.

“It probably wouldn’t have gone well for you,” Vresh said with a smile as she leaned closer, giving him a rather mesmerizing view of crimson décolletage.

“No,” Jeb said, nodding as he failed to tear his gaze away from the melas woman beside him. “It probably wouldn’t have. Still a little disappointed, though.”

“Ahem.”

Jeb’s gaze snapped back to the melas across the table from them.

“Right. What were we talking about?”

Chapter 6: Politics *shudder*

“What in the nine hells are you doing here!?” Vresh demanded, shaking him lightly by his collar. As far as Jeb was aware, this was the half-time break of the dinner, where everyone got a chance to stretch their legs, and Vresh had taken the opportunity to drag him aside and get the whole story.

“Well, I got a letter I thought was from you, and since we parted on amicable terms, and there was a dead imperial valet in my hotel room, I thought you could…you know…help with that?”

“I’m not sweeping a corpse under the rug for you, Jeb. I don’t like you that much.”

She likes me!

“To be fair, it’s more of a pile of ash. Very conducive to being swept under a rug. Besides, I didn’t kill ‘em.”

She glanced at him from the side. “Are you responsible?”

Jeb considered that. “A…little? I guess it would have been better if I left a note, but I just assumed not touching things with auras of dread was common sense.”

Jeb saw her losing her patience and decided to switch tactics.

“So, the guy to the left. What’s his deal?” Jeb said, glancing at the on-the-fence melas.

“He’s my maternal uncle, and he’s one of the few people in the family not immediately descended from Vroth Tekalis.”

“I thought your dad was the patriarch?”

“He only married the once,” Vresh said with a sigh. “In four hundred years, he only had one daughter, while his brother has a couple every decade. Nearly every major position inside the family has been quietly filled by someone directly descended from him.”

“So why can’t he just take control? Or start his own house?”

“I’m sure he could make his own house, but the Tekalis name has a lot of history, pull, respect…and money. He wants that name. He wants that money. The meeting today is to try and pressure me into marrying one of my cousins and making Vroth my father-in-law, allowing him to legally assume stewardship over the name.”

“Gross.”

She shrugged. “The cousins put forward are removed by several generations, so it’s not as gross as you might think…but yes. Gross.”

“So, why can’t you just, like…” Jeb made a chopping motion at his neck.

“If I do that, the family will dissolve.”

“So why’s your maternal uncle here?”

“Bravus Morbin is a moneylender who was funneled quite a bit of our business while my father was alive, partly at the behest of my mother, and after her death, by my father, possibly out of a sense of guilt. Right now, that man has more of the family business in his hands than I do. If he decides to support Vroth, there’s not much I can do. I can’t make a scene, or else the scales in Bravus’s head may tip in Vroth’s favor.”

“So, what do we do?”

“If you weren’t here, I would most likely be talking to Bravus right now.” She jerked her head toward the side of the room, where Vroth was chatting up the melas moneylender.

The other two melas loyal to her uncle stood between them, eyeing Jeb and Vresh like defensive linemen. Jeb could read it in their body language that they intended to snag anyone that tried to approach Bravus and subject them to stalling measures consisting of banal questions.

Is this politics or football? Jeb thought, curiously. Actually, thinking of it like football really helps me get my head around the game here.

The moneylender was the ball, Vroth’s cronies were the defense, and Vroth was trying to score with the other man.

Eww, no, that analogy fell apart pretty quick.

Jeb’s gaze landed on the young melas man who had been seated beside her. He looked distinctly uncomfortable, shifting from side to side as he obviously felt left out of the conversation, but was too passive to barge in.

Not a good sign for Vresh’s only present ally.

“We haven’t been introduced. Jebediah Trapper,” Jeb said, offering his hand. The nervous young man took it after a moment’s hesitation.

“Jozeth Fross. My father owes her father a favor, and has sent me to express our support. Unfortunately, we are a minor house, without too terribly much sway.” He glanced nervously at the wealthy melas on the opposite side of the room from them.

“Weak,” Jeb blurted before regaining control of his tongue.

Of course, the kid’s dad probably had more in mind than selflessly returning the favor to a dead man. He could do that, but why not make a bid for getting your son inside a powerful family?

Even if that failed, as long as Vresh won, the debt would exist to some extent, improving the relationship between the two houses.

“Why can’t Vroth over there squish your house for standing up to him?” Jeb asked.

“We operate in separate sectors,” Jozeth said. “He couldn’t dissuade us from supporting Ms. Tekalis without paying more than it was worth, and potentially opening his family to being picked at by another great house. This could lead to a downward spiral.”

Ah, the buzzards are constantly circling each other. That was why everyone had to play so goddamn defensively. Get too carried away dealing with one threat and the other will show up and take you out, reaping all the benefits at no cost.

Let’s see. Including me, we’ve got three people, which is the same number that they have. We should leave talking to Bravus to Vresh, since she’s the one who actually knows what’s going on.

The question is, how do we pry him away from Vroth? There’s only three of us, which is the same number as them…

Wait a minute.

Jeb excused himself and hustled over to where the fairy was hiding under the cabinet…only, she wasn’t there anymore. She was sitting in the chandelier, holding her fingers above the soft flames until she winced and withdrew them.

Is that…candle soot around her eyes?

“Smartass…you okay…?” Jeb called up to her.

“Existence is pain. Eventually everything turns to dust and is washed away by an ocean of time.”

No wonder Smartass said older fairies were mean.

“Pretty sure you’re immortal,” Jeb called up to her.

“Immortality is a word devised by the short-lived to describe something they don’t understand. But time is relentless. It doesn’t matter how it happens; sooner or later, the pieces align, and entropy will win out.”

“Okaaay… You wanna freak out some squares?”

She glanced at him and sighed. “I guess.”

******

“Alright, huddle up,” Jeb said, hooking an arm over Jozeth’s shoulder and Vresh’s as best he could. “The fairy is locked and loaded, and we’re only gonna get one shot at this before they bring dessert. Does everybody understand your roles?”

“I’m going to engage Daz Tekalis in a conversation first,” Jozeth said with a nod.

“I’m going to ask the horny guy on the right all the questions I’ve been saving about melas biology,” Smartass said from Jeb’s shoulder.

“I’m going to peel Vroth away from your other uncle,” Jeb said, glancing at Vresh.

“And I’m going to convince him to side with the primary family,” she said.

“Just like that?” Jeb asked.

“I can be very convincing,” Vresh said, with the cold voice of an executioner.

“I leave it to your discretion,” Jeb said. “Alright, Jozeth, you’re up.”

Jozeth nodded, then went to do word-battle. He aimed for Vroth and Bravus first, forcing the leftmost Tekalis to step in front of him, dragging him into a faux congenial conversation that it would be terribly impolite to shrug off.

“Alright, my turn,” Jeb said, peeling away from their huddle and heading around the right side of the table, angling for the two powerful melas in the corner.

The right-hand melas moved toward him, but before he could open his mouth, Jeb extended his hand.

“She’s got some questions for you.”

“Hi!” Smartass said, using his arm as a springboard to hop on top of the man’s head and grabbing onto his horns.

“Are these functional?” she asked. “Is this part of a mating display, or do you guys actually use them to fend off predators, or what? I’m guessing mating display since you have opposable thumbs and weapons you could easily use to fend off predators. Does it relate to the size of your dong? Can I see your dong?”

Jeb slipped past the flustered defense and made a beeline for Vroth Tekalis, intending to distract him by seeking advice on etiquette for his audience with the emperor. Might as well perform double duty with his distraction.

“Excuse me, gentlemen. I was hoping to ask—”

“Mr. Trapper!” Bravus Morbin said, grabbing Jeb’s arm and dragging him away from Vroth, who looked amused. “Just the person I wanted to talk to!”

“¿Que?” Jeb croaked as Bravus led him away. Out of the corner of his eyes, Jeb saw Vroth block Vresh’s advance, planting himself firmly in between them, much to the ex-enforcer’s displeasure.

Damnit! The plan has failed! Modify the plan! Jeb wasn’t the best wordsmith, but he could at least give Vresh his seal of approval before crème brûlée arrived.

“So, about Vre—”

“What bank are you planning on using to store all that money?”

“All what money?”

Bravus lowered his voice conspiratorially. “The Impossible fortune. If you truly did complete the Impossible Tutorial, there is a significant amount of treasure in your name in the imperial vaults.”

Jeb blinked. “Honestly, I’d forgotten about it.”

“Haha, what a kidder,” the fat melas said, slapping Jeb on the back. Luckily, he had enough Body to resist the power behind it. “So, what are your plans for it?”

“Probably will the liquid cash to Zlesk and the other administrators of The Admiral Orphanage, and keep any non-liquid assets for myself,” Jeb said with a shrug.

“An orphanage, huh? Have you considered a trust fund geared toward maintaining its operation indefinitely, rather than simply divesting yourself of all your assets?”

Am I being…sold to?

Wow. Jeb had never considered that he was worth the time and effort. He didn’t think he gave off the signs of wealth, except possibly the fact that he wasn’t concerned with it.

Some people could sniff out money like a bloodhound.

I wonder if that’s a Class or something? Jeb thought for a moment before screwing his head back on straight.

“Gimmie your card. That actually sounds like a decent idea.”

“My card?” Bravus asked.

“You don’t carry business cards around with your contact information? I suppose without telephones, they might not be as applicable. At least your office location and mailing address.”

“Hmm…” The melas man’s face flashed with inspiration a moment before he pulled an envelope out of his vest and ripped the address off the top corner, handing it to Jeb.

“There you are, Mr. Trapper.”

“I’ll keep you in mind for a trust fund,” Jeb promised, shoving the address into his vest pocket. “In the meantime, I actually had questions that I think you could elucidate.”

“By all means.”

“Why support Vroth and not Vresh? It was my understanding that Vresh was the heir.”

Blunt, but to the point.

Bravus smiled wistfully. “Ah, it’s a shame such a lovely girl has been put in this situation. I appreciate your directness, Mr. Trapper. The reason I would choose her uncle over her is the same as any other decision I must make as a moneylender: risk.”

Jeb raised a brow and nodded, prompting him to continue.

“Being the patriarch of the Tekalis family is historically a dangerous endeavor. Her father had the longest reign of any leader of the family. He was an outlier with the strength of ten patriarchs before him. We do not know yet how much of his strength Vresh inherited.”

“If it’s so dangerous, why choose Vroth? Isn’t the man demonstrably weaker than she is?”

“Physically, perhaps, but the man has well-trained replacements for days. Three of them are serving the emperor as enforcers right now, so strength of arms is not a concern. Vresh has no successors whatsoever, and an unproven ability to survive the position.”

“So she’s a risky bet because she hasn’t had enough babies?” Jeb said aloud, brow rising.

“Crudely put, yes.”

Hmm… Jeb thought, thumbing his chin. That gives me an idea. The problem is not enough babies—make some more babies. Matter of fact, just take someone else’s babies. Make the problem into the solution. It’s crazy, but I don’t see why it shouldn’t work.

A bell rang, and the massive double doors opened to reveal a train of servants steering in several carts full of dessert, signaling an end to the half-time powwow.

Everyone re-took their seats as delicious dishes were passed out. Smartass even got her own highchair, as the staff went above and beyond to accommodate her. She’d temporarily forgotten about her goth phase, although she was still wearing candle soot around her eyes as she enthusiastically devoured the crème brûlée.

“What did he say?” Vresh whispered between bites of cubed jelly.

“He gave me a clearer understanding of why he’s leaning towards your uncle.”

“Did you try to convince him otherwise?” she asked above a glass of diesel.

“No time,” Jeb whispered back. “But he did give me some ideas for how to fix your problem. And I think they would work better if you admitted to everyone that you find me attractive.”

Vresh spat a fine mist of diesel across the table, where it touched the candles and formed into a massive fireball, leaving the decorative flowers in the center smoldering.

“Hahahah!” Jeb cackled wildly before Vresh punched him in the shoulder, sending him tumbling out of his seat. Smartass yelped and dodged out of the way, saving her soft treat from Jeb’s flailing arms as he flew past.

Ow.

“Something wrong?” Vroth asked with a frown, attracting Vresh’s gaze.

The former enforcer’s red skin darkened to a deep crimson as she blushed heavily, frozen like a deer in headlights.

“I was. Umm…” She struggled to form words.

“I said something inappropriate,” Jeb said, hauling himself back to the table. “My bad.” He reached up and grabbed his muddy prosthetic from where it had landed on the table.

“I see. I didn’t expect your friend to be so uncouth,” Vroth said. Jeb could see how extremely pleased the man was with her outburst, virtually patting himself on the back for inviting Jeb—a notoriously chaotic influence—to Vresh’s pitch to her moneylending uncle.

Enjoy it while it lasts, buddy.

***Later***

The delegates had gone back to their homes after the servants salvaged as much of the evening as possible. Vresh maintained a barely controlled anger until the last person was out of sight beyond the front gates.

As soon as they disappeared behind the hedge, she rounded on him and picked him up by his collar. This time, Vresh was shaking him a fair bit harder than before, his shirt making worrying tearing noises as she throttled him.

“What was that!?” she demanded.

“Have you considered adoption?” Jeb asked with a grin.

******

The kitri lawyer cleared his throat, his elongated talon following the weathered text in the lawbook as he spoke, his voice thin and reedy.

“In the case of Forzus vs. Forzus, it was determined that a Citizen cannot be disowned or disinherited on the basis of sexual preference.

“Furthermore,” the lawyer said, flipping through the massive book to another densely-worded page, “code eleven hundred and fifteen, section C, paragraph two states that should an inheritor’s sexual deviancy preclude the creation of legitimate offspring, the state will uphold their right to adopt a close family member and name them as a successor in the eyes of the law.”

“Blam,” Jeb said, motioning to the book. “Problem solved.”

Vresh squinted at him. “How did you know that would be a viable option?”

“Off the top of my head, I can’t remember, but I know on Earth, there have been stories about people adopting family members in cases of infertility or something of that nature. On Pharos, I knew there had to be a precedent for it. And look, it’s written vaguely enough to account for your xenophilia.”

Vresh stomped on the toes of his left foot, cracking the unfeeling wood.

“Ow?” Jeb asked with a raised brow.

“Sorry,” she muttered.

The kitri lawyer cocked a brow, glancing between the two of them. “My time is a bulb an hour, so if you’ve got questions, I would suggest being quick with them rather than flirting.”

“Can we adopt one of her uncle’s children and steal the man’s support out from underneath him?”

“You might,” the balding kitri said, cleaning his glasses. Jeb couldn’t get the vision of an old buzzard out of his head. “Although, from what you’ve told me, if this uncle of hers has more than one major pillar of support, this may simply fracture the family even further. Have you considered simply adopting the uncle?”

Vresh’s jaw dropped. “Why on Pharos would I do that?”

“With the right contract, you can give him legal status as your ‘firstborn’. Then when he dies, the right of succession would go to your actual firstborn. You essentially make it into a battle to see which of you can outlive the other. Given your apparent youth and tremendous Body stat, your natural life expectancy is most likely far above your uncle’s, while he may believe you’ll suffer…misfortune before he passes away. If both of you are confident you can outlast the other, the arrangement may satisfy all parties. I’ll make overtures to the man’s lawyer.”

“Wow. That’s incredible, thank you,” Vresh said.

“You’re welcome, although to maintain the legitimacy of your claim of being a xenophile, you may wish to spend more time in public with Mr. Trapper, here.”

“Can’t I just be a lesbian?”

“Are you?” the lawyer asked.

Vresh glanced at Jeb before she deflated in her chair. “No…”

Whoo! Jeb cheered internally.

“Wow, I’m glad we could get a course of action figured out. Wanna go get something to eat to celebrate? He did say we should be somewhat public with the dating.”

Vresh glanced over at him, pursing her lips. “Was this whole thing a way to entrap me into going on a date with you?”

“Absolutely not,” Jeb said, shaking his head. “Forcing you to go on a date with me is a target of opportunity.”

Vresh gave a full-throated laugh. “Fine, but I pick the restaurant. You don’t know anything about the capital.”

“As long as they have human food, I’m fine with it.”

The lawyer cleared his throat again.

“Do you two have anything else for me?” he asked, glancing at the grandfather clock in the corner of the room. “Because I would hate to charge you another bulb for dead air.”

Translation: ‘Your flirting is irritating me, and if you’re done, get the hell out of here.’

Vresh stood and offered Jeb a hand, which he took.

Her hand was smooth as the finest desert sand, bigger than his own, yet delicate for its size. Temperature feverish, nearly scalding.

Jeb liked the pain.

How can her hand be this soft, when she fights with swords for a living? Or used to? Jeb could only assume Body had something to do with it.

Vresh’s thumb tickled the hairs on the back of his hand, and Jeb about lost his mind. A jolt of electricity buzzed up into his brain, then filtered down through his body, making his heart thump, breathing labored, knees noodly.

“You’re so cold,” she murmured, leaning over him, heat radiating off her body like a furnace.

Jeb grinned. “Well, I bet you could do som—”

“Get out of my office,” the kitri said, pointing.

“Yessir,” Jeb said, hopping out of the seat and clomping towards the door, trying his best not to mar the kitri’s expensive carpet with his prosthetic. Despite being a bit curmudgeony, he’d given them an exploitable loophole.

Pro tip: Never get on your lawyer’s bad side. They work tirelessly on your behalf. Until they don’t. Jeb was fairly sure the old kitri knew just as many ways to screw them over as help them.

When they hit the street, Jeb took a deep breath of the stanky city air and heaved a sigh. Smartass rejoined them immediately, having been prohibited from the lawyer’s office. The fairy flew up to his shoulder as he took stock of the situation.

He’d made great strides helping Vresh out with her problems. Now he could refocus on his own.

“So, about that dead guy in my hotel room…”

“You still wanna go on that date?” she asked, cocking a brow.

“Nevermind. What dead guy?” Technically not a lie, a sidestep phrased as a question.

“Umm, Jebediah Trapper?”

Jeb’s brow shot up at the sound of his own name, and he turned, expecting to find someone intending to arrest him.

Instead, he found himself looking at a kitri with rather glossy feathers, wearing an imperial valet badge and a white velvet/gold trim vest. Behind the kitri boy—he was male, judging by his feathers, and still had a tiny bit of growing to do—there were two more companions: a keegan with a slender saber and a belt full of what looked like climbing supplies, and a melas woman with similar proportions to Vresh, dressed remarkably similarly, down to the tight-fitting pants and half-buttoned shirt.

“That’s me,” Jeb said with a frown, scanning them for signs they might start something.

“My name is Piwaki Apiyeki,” he said, making a neck-wobbly kitri bow. “I’ll be your imperial valet to help prepare you for—”

“Outta the way!” the melas girl said, shoving the valet aside, causing the kitri to stumble away with a honk.

“Oh, my goddess, you’re Vresh Tekalis!” she said, clasping her hands in front of her face in astonishment.

“You two—”

“Hey, you’re Jebediah Trapper, right?” The keegan asked, interrupting his friend.

“Yes?” I just said that.

The Melas girl continued gushing without pause. “I’m such a big fan! I don’t know if you noticed, but I basically base my whole style off of you. The way you took out that cabal of reapers that had infiltrated Juskanta was amazing!” She said, looking up at Vresh with eyes brimming with worshipful tears.

Vresh seemed used to having people fangirling over her, handling the girl easily with a bemused smile.

“So, what was the Impossible Tutorial like?” the keegan asked Jeb while all this was going down. “I always regretted not being born before the keegan were added to Pharos.”

“You could always just go to the Death Wilds on your own, if you want,” Jeb said with a shrug. The Impossible Tutorial was just set in a really inhospitable place. Nothing preventing people from going there.

“It’s not quite the same,” the keegan said, shaking his head. “The time limit, the looming threat of death should you fail…” The keegan’s long, hollow tongue slipped out of his mouth for a moment as he daydreamed about possibly dying.

“Agh!” The keegan stumbled away as the imperial valet used his claws to deliver a knife-hand jab to the alien’s ribs.

“As I was saying…” Piwaki’s gaze landed on the melas girl, who was trying to get Vresh to sign her cleavage.

“Jeresh, control yourself!”

Chapter 7: To Suffer as a Valet

“I’m sorry, I gotta be back at home to receive word if my uncle has accepted the deal,” Vresh said, frowning unhappily.

“Rain check?” Jeb said with a shrug. He couldn’t do much more than shrug, with the tailor literally holding a needle to his genitals and the valet hustling back and forth with various types of cloth, holding them up to Jeb’s face before shaking his head with a honk, heading off to find something else.

“What’s a rain check?” Vresh asked, glancing down at Jeb’s predicament with an amused smirk.

“Something you can’t control interrupts something you planned, like the weather prevents you from going on a date, you take a ‘rain check’ that you can then ‘cash in’ later.”

“Sounds good,” she said, leaving the tailor’s shop and leaving Jeb feeling a bit more hollow than he had been just a few minutes before.

He redirected it at Piwaki. “You cost me a date with a beautiful woman. I hope the emperor understands that I begrudgingly prioritize seeing him over getting some trim.”

“The emperor is a man,” the valet said, holding a square of fuchsia cloth up to Jeb’s shoulders before shaking his head and moving to magenta, shaking his head the entire time. “I’m sure he understands the sentiment.”

“Well, this got boring,” Jeresh said, standing up. “Kolusk, you in?”

“I expected more disintegration,” the keegan said with a disappointed slump to his shoulders.

“That was an unintentional premature disintegration,” Jeb protested. “I swear it’s never happened to me before!”

“Yeah, I’m right behind you,” the keegan said, leaving with the melas girl. The two of them turned left outside the shop, conspicuously following the direction that Vresh had gone in. I hope they don’t piss her off to the point she kills them…or worse, has a bad impression of hanging out with me.

“Smartass, do NOT go with them!” The fairy stuck out her tongue as she caught a ride on the teen keegan’s shoulder, the shop doorbell ringing as it closed behind her.

“I told them it was going to be boring,” the valet said, holding some puke green up to his face. “Ah, perfect.”

“Seriously?” Jeb asked.

“Of course I’m serious. Kitri are tetrachromats. A child could pick a better color scheme than the finest human designer. This will make your eyes pop.”

“Cuz where I’m sitting, it looks like puke green.”

“Huh,” the kitri said, glancing at the color for a moment, putting it back up to his face. “Yeah, we’re going with this one.”

The ordeal wasn’t done there, though. After the formal wear was completed—in remarkably short order—the valet followed Jeb back to his hotel room, reading a list of dos and don’ts from a manual about an inch thick with tiny print.

“And one must never shake their neck in an oscillating motion in the presence of the emperor. To do so is—”

“Look, humans don’t typically oscillate their necks. Can we just skip all the non-human sections of the book?” They were trudging up the stairs to Jeb’s hotel room, the valet hounding him every step of the way.

“Not until there actually is a section for human etiquette, unfortunately,” Piwaki said, flipping to the next page. “Until then, we have to cover everything.”

Jeb groaned and rolled his eyes as they approached the door to his room.

He paused for a moment and interrupted the valet’s monotone reading of the manual with a raised hand. “Kid. Under no circumstances should you touch the blue scroll on the floor.”

The valet nodded, took a deep breath, then spoke. “Never lift your tailfeathers higher than the middle of your back, as doing so—”

Jeb’s eye twitched a moment before he opened the door, revealing Borg leaning against the bed, his eyes dull and glossy, mouth open, tongue hanging out. One of his arms was torn out of its socket, revealing sizzling wires poking out of the decaying flesh.

There was black undead blood all over the room, the poisonous substance pooling under Borg’s torso.

“Hey,” Jeb said, nudging Borg with his shoe. “You still alive?”

“Whatever it is, he’s obviously—”

“Yeah, just working on my self-repair subroutine,” Borg said, his eyes still dead and staring.

“Gods!” the valet shouted, jumping back from the zombot and nearly touching the scroll in the center of the room. If anything, Jeb thought he felt a sense of…anticipation as the kitri’s heel neared the scroll.

Jeb reached out with his Myst, picked the kitri up like a kitten and set him down on the other side of the room.

The scroll radiated disappointment.

“What happened?” Jeb asked.

“Testing the rules by which the scroll operates. I’m happy to report that the scroll thinks of me as a sapient being,” Borg said.

“You touched it?” Jeb demanded.

“Oh, no. I poked it with a stick. The Destruction Myst inside seemed to be keyed to trigger when a solid connection is established with a sapient creature. It was a bit like a static electric shock passing through a metal pole.

“In about a tenth of a second, the destruction had worked its way up to my elbow, and I was forced to tear out my arm before it spread further.”

“So what you’re saying is, you did the thing I told you not to do?”

“Absolutely not. At no point was I directly in contact with the scroll. And I figured out some interesting things by studying the reaction.”

“Gods, what is that thing!?” the kitri valet asked, backing into the corner of the room, his eyes locked on Borg as the undead climbed to his feet.

Jeb shushed him. “Quiet. What’d you find out?”

“It seems like the scroll is indiscriminate, and will consume anything it considers sapient. Smartass should be dead right now.”

“Then why isn’t she?” Jeb asked.

“The scroll thought she was you.”

“What?”

“Allow me to demonstrate,” Borg said, kneeling with his head bowed.

“On my honor as a vastly superior being, I swear to serve Jebediah Trapper to the best of my abilities until he releases me of my vow.”

Jeb frowned.

Borg leaned over and picked up the blue scroll.

There was an instant of dread, but the scroll stayed quiescent, not reacting like it had when the kitri grew close to it.

“You and Smartass have a strong master-servant bond in the fifth dimension, and now, so do we,” Borg said, hefting the scroll, studying it thoughtfully. “The scroll reacts to anyone distinctly not you in the fifth dimension. The strong bond between you and Smartass made her appear to the scroll to be an extension of yourself. By swearing loyalty to you—and meaning it—I was able to bypass the scroll’s protection.

“Of course, given the vow, I’m unable to use the contents of the scroll against you in any way, so the protection is still basically functional.”

“Hard to spoof intent-based magic.”

“Indeed. I doubt an inferior meatsack would be able to swear undying loyalty at the drop of a hat, either.”

“Is this supposed to convince me that it’s safe for me to touch, or that you’re a robot of your word?” Jeb asked.

“It wouldn’t work if I didn’t mean it,” Borg said, waggling the blue scroll at him.

Eh, fuck it, I’ve lived long enough, Jeb thought with a shrug before reaching out and taking the scroll from Borg’s hand.

Annnnd…still alive. Maybe I’ll get that date later.

Hmm….

Jeb slipped the scroll in his pocket.

“You’re not gonna…read it?” Piwaki asked.

“Why would I read it?” Jeb asked, genuinely confused. “The fifth dimension watches our actions closely. Whoever gave me the scroll is obviously super evil, and reading it demonstrates a willingness to subject myself to whatever is inside. That opens a gap in my defense. A small one, but still there.”

“Metaphorically,” Borg said.

“Which is what the fifth dimension thrives on,” Jeb muttered. “Metaphors and symbolism.”

I wonder if a rain check is a tangible object in the fifth dimension, and by securing it, I could guarantee that date?

Jeb didn’t have the time to experiment with that, although it seemed like an excellent test subject to begin manipulating Fate itself. If he mastered the art of guaranteeing a date, he’d be on the same level as the emperor and Vex.

Well, maybe not the same level.

“You were saying something about the rules of etiquette?” Jeb asked, glancing up at Piwaki.

“Um, yes.” The kitri cleared his throat with a honk and glanced between Jeb and Borg, who was frowning at his missing arm, poking the wires back into the oozing socket.

The valet began reading from his handbook again, nervously glancing up and checking Jeb and Borg’s position every now and then.

“Come now, young man. I’m not so scary,” Borg said, once he’d duct taped his wound closed.

Jeb watched with amusement as Borg tried and failed to get the kitri to relax.

Jeb just wanted to get some sleep, but he had to pretend to be listening to Piwaki’s explanation of etiquette, so he sat down against the bed and started playing with Myst.

A direction that doesn’t exist, huh? Jeb thought as he created a plasma filament in front of him, bright as an incandescent bulb.

Jeb’s current ‘spellbook’, for lack of a better word, included Telekinesis and Plasma Whip. Energy was the common theme between the two of them.

I only know of five directions. Three dimensions, plus before and after, and then the fifth dimension. Meaning, metaphor, and potential. How do I treat that as a direction?

Jeb started with his normal string of Myst, then began budding strands off of it, looping them back into the thread, creating destructive interference to change the ‘frequency’, which changed its meaning.

Eddie’d told him he shouldn’t experiment without a plan, because it was suicidal, but Jeb couldn’t think of a better time to be suicidal than when being forced to listen to rules that didn’t apply to you.

“Skull-frills should be kept down at all times,” Piwaki said, turning the page.

Yeah, I’m comfortable with possibly killing myself via explosion.

The fifth dimension is meaning, metaphor, attachment, vows, emotion.

Jeb opened his eyes and frowned, looking down at the thread of Myst in front of him.

Hmm…

“Who’s a good boy!?” Jeb asked the thread of Myst. You are! You’re a good boy! I’ve never had such a good thread of Myst! Jeb mentally showered the thread of Myst with the same love he would give a family pet.

“What are you— Oh, gods!”

The kitri valet dove out of the way as the Myst ballooned outward, forming into a massive tentacle questing about the room until it touched Borg’s leg.

The zombot froze as the tentacle seized him and began slamming the robot back and forth against the cheap hotel’s thin walls.

“Jeb. Would. You. Please. Turn. It. Off,” Borg said, between slams against the wall.

The neighboring hooker screamed and fled with her john as Borg was catapulted through the thin paneling.

“Excuse me, ma’am,” Borg said to her fleeing form as he flipped out of the way of the questing tentacle.

Bad, bad boy! Jeb changed his mental tune directed at the Myst tentacle. No, BAD. BAD MYST.

The Myst shriveled up into geodesic chunks of dark metal, snowflake-like crystals that rained down on top of them.

The dark metal throbbed with sound, echoing certain pitches, radiating heat as they did.

“I’d say that experiment was a success!” Jeb said with a grin. It made sense that applying a meaningful emotional attachment to the Myst would move it along the fifth dimension’s axis. It was more complicated than treating Myst like a dog to make it into a dog. Jeb was so in the dark about what meanings created what effects when combined with the fifth axis of the spell spectrum…it was effectively random.

“Perhaps you’d enlighten me on what you did? I’ve already taken the liberty of calling Eddie,” Borg said as he climbed back through the shattered wall, trailing a bra which had hooked itself to his clothes.

“No, don’t—”

Borg’s jaw unhinged and the old inventor's voice came through it.

“What’s this I heard about you trying to invent a new spell with no math whatsoever?” Eddie’s voice echoed through the room.

“You can’t exactly ‘math’ emotions, can you?” Jeb asked.

“You sure as hell can try!” Eddie’s voice came through. “Tell me exactly what you did and what happened!”

“Stop yelling, the crystals are gonna set things on fire!” Jeb yelled back as the dark metal snowflakes the size of his fist absorbed certain bandwidths of sound and heated up, smoldering on the wooden floor.

“Oh hell yeah, we’re gonna talk about this.”

Jeb rubbed his temples and sat back for his interrogation.

***Piwaki Apiyeki, level 20 Mystic Cosmetic Healer***

“The man is deranged,” Piwaki said, nursing his honeywine. He didn’t have a lot of Body, so he didn’t need to drink the hard stuff to get a buzz like Kolusk and Jeresh.

“He seemed fairly normal to me,” Kolusk said with a shrug. “Are you sure you got the right guy?”

“There was an intelligent undead in his bedroom! He’s got a scroll made from some evil being that turns people to ash. Won’t read it, but carries it around in his pocket! His Myst went out of control and smashed through the wall minutes after we arrived! He made strange metal out of nothing that turns some sounds into heat and amplifies others! He doesn’t appreciate my fashion sense!”

“That last one I agree with,” Jeresh said.

“Screw you.”

“Couldn’t if you wanted to,” Jeresh replied.

“I think you’re making it up,” Kolusk said bluntly.

“What!?” Piwaki demanded.

“Yeah, from what we saw, he just…kinda clomps around, complaining about everything.” The melas backed up his keegan friend in doubting Piwaki’s words.

“Seems like a stretch that he made that much trouble in the few hours we didn’t see you.”

Piwaki felt a weight alight on his shoulder as the fairy landed, wobbling for a moment before she sat down, a shot glass of honeywine in her hand.

“I believe you, Peeki,” Smartass said, patting Piwaki’s shoulder. “Jeb’s a big dumb-dumb who treats everyone like children, when really he’s the craziest one of all, always trying to find a way to get himself killed.”

She took a swig of the honeywine and exhaled. “This actually tastes pretty good. Sweet, even.”

Piwaki motioned to the illegal fairy on his shoulder. “What about her? Jeb has her. She’s illegal. Her kind have been stealing people’s crops, livelihoods, children, et cetera.”

“I dunno, she looks too cute to steal. She’s like a little melas without the horns, or the coloration,” Jeresh said.

“It’s not stealing. It’s Deals!” Smartass muttered, holding onto Piwaki’s beak to steady herself. “Not my fault your working-class peasants are so trusting.”

Jeresh barked a laugh. “Smartass, you’re alright.”

Smartass blushed. “Thanks! For some reason, I feel like I need the validation of teenagers right now, so that really scratches that itch.”

Kolusk chuckled and lifted the fairy onto his shoulders. “Tell you what. Let’s leave this sad sack here to plan his next couple days while we do a pub crawl!”

“Pub crawl!” Jeresh shouted.

“Pub crawl!” Smartass echoed, pointing forward towards the door. The three of them marched out to enjoy the rest of their evening.

“You’ll see!” Piwaki shouted after them. “The man’s a menace! You’ll all see!”

The bartender chose that moment to unobtrusively refill Piwaki’s drink.

“I didn’t really catch much of the conversation, but I do know that the guy who ends his conversation with ‘You’ll all see!’ is generally the crazy one,” the man said, purposefully not meeting Piwaki’s gaze.

“Ah, what do you know,” Piwaki muttered, waving him off.

Three days. Should I be more focused on surviving, or making sure the meeting with Uncle goes as smoothly as possible?

I think the answer to that is obvious.

Should I fail in my duties as a valet, my reputation will suffer, leading to being ostracized by the higher-class citizens, resulting in a serious blow to my plans of accumulating massive amounts of wealth and a life of leisure.

I would be significantly less wealthy should I have to work with *shudder* commoners.

A fate worse than death.

No, obviously I should focus my energies on pulling this meeting off perfectly. I’ve already got the suit taken care of, but it’s currently in that gods-forsaken dump of a hotel.

What are the odds the suit is destroyed over the course of the next two days?

Piwaki’s feathers flattened on his head as he thought, tapping his pen on the bar napkin.

Backup plans, he wrote, underlining it. If Jeb had a tendency to create chaos within his sphere of influence, then a simple solution was to have all the prep work outside Jeb’s line of sight.

To that effect, he would have to order a spare suit created and stored at the palace, should the one that was created today be shredded, lit on fire, ashed, or slimed with undead blood.

The night wore on as Piwaki, for perhaps the first time in his life, took his duties seriously.

***Jeb***

“Okay, now treat the Myst like it’s your child. I want you to distinctly imagine giving birth to the Myst from your vagina and nursing it with your milk. It spent nine months in there. It’s your baby.” Eddie’s voice echoed through Borg’s speakers.

“Are you fucking with me?” Jeb demanded.

“Do it! We’re trying to figure out the effect the spectrum of relationships has on the Myst. We need more data points before we can apply mathematical formulae to it.”

Jeb sighed, and tried his best to imagine Eddie’s ridiculous prompt.

The kinetic Myst suddenly detached from Jeb’s control, turned into a shrieking ball of white-hot slag and began spiraling around Jeb of its own accord.

“Shit!” Jeb ducked and rolled out of the way of the sizzling ball of white-hot goo that was whipping around the room seemingly without pattern.

“Jeb, can you describe what’s happening?!” Eddie’s voice said, which caused the…thing to orient on it, seeking out the source of the sound.

“Gimme a minute!” Jeb said, weaving a shield around himself before branching another thread to catch the errant Myst. It was like the freakin’ Snitch, constantly whizzing around the room at insane speeds, pinging off his shields more than once.

Borg dodged out of the way of the screaming missile, scrambling over the bag with the suit inside of it, leaving several large black stains on the bag.

Jeb winced. I really hope the bag is waterpro—oh, nevermind.

The wailing ball of goo shot through the bed, lighting the sheets and his new suit on fire.

Chapter 8: Treason is Rude

The kitri’s droning echoed through the massive vaulted halls, bouncing off the polished stone that seemed to compose every bit of the palace.

“Do not itch yourself in an unseemly place, do not spit. If you must cough, cover your mouth with your shirtsleeve.”

“Those seem specifically human,” Jeb said as the kitri gave them a final briefing on their way to the audience with the emperor.

“I spent an evening tracking down some other humans and compiling a list of things that are rude for humans to do. Do not make a jerking motion at your waist then fling imaginary semen at someone.”

Jeb blinked. “That is rude, although it never occurred to me to do it until just now.”

“Ugh!” Piwaki gave a barely-restrained grunt of frustration. “Just don’t.”

“Got it.”

“And Borg, your restrictions are going to be tighter than Jeb’s. It would likely be for the best if you were to refrain from speaking or…doing anything aside from walking in and out of the room.”

“Understood.”

Jeb glanced over at Smartass walking beside them, looking a little sick as she clutched her stomach.

“And that’s why I told you not to go partying with those teenagers,” Jeb said.

“They understand me!” Smartass said. “You’re not my dad. Get off my back!”

Jeb patted Smartass on the head, but she brushed him off with a scowl.

Aw man, where’d my cute fairy go? Jeb thought as he walked. Hopefully when she was done growing, she would settle on an attitude, and Jeb would be able to get his bearings. Until then, he supposed there was nothing to do but weather the rapid mood shifts.

“And it would probably be for the best if Smartass…waited outside,” Piwaki said, wincing.

I can see that, Jeb thought, but he wasn’t going to agree in earshot of Smartass.

“You think I’ll embarrass you? You think I’m dumb, don’t you? You’re treating me like a burden, just like Jeb! Fine, I don’t wanna be here anyway!” she screamed and ran away, clutching her stomach.

Why was she still clutching her stomach? Jeb thought, frowning.

His attention was ripped away from the emotional roller coaster that was Smartass by the sudden application of various makeup by three kitri women literally cooing over him.

Kitri women were smaller and had less colorful plumage, and their beaks were shorter. They were less like Big Bird and more like giant pigeons. It was a bit of an ungenerous thought, and Jeb desperately held in his laughter as a gaggle of giant pigeons applied makeup to his face.

A moment later, Jeb and company were ushered towards a gigantic set of double doors.

Jeb could make out a faint silvery Myst trailing every step he took, ethereally pushing him along.

Is that the emperor’s Myst? Jeb thought. He briefly considered what might happen if he tried to counter the Myst or fight against its push, but he thought better of it. For now, he was just satisfied with being able to see it fairly well.

Now was not the time to experiment. Jeb didn’t want to get hit by a meteor that shoved him into the throne room, or some other destructive, ridiculous outcome that forced him to arrive at the emperor’s Summons.

“Jebediah Trapper.” Jeb heard the sound of his own name as the doors opened, revealing the throne room in all its glory.

The ceilings had their own atmosphere, and the breadth of the hall could easily accommodate several professional sports. The floors were shiny and covered in mosaics that seemed to move of their own accord.

In the center of it all was a familiar kitri sitting upon a gilded throne.

It was spectacular, and that was the point.

To the left of the emperor was a cart of shiny things. Jeb didn’t dare to hope they were his.

“Welcome, Mr. Trapper. I hope you don’t mind that I took the liberty of assembling your prizes from the Impossible Tutorial for your perusal,” the emperor said.

Hell yeah! Jeb suppressed the urge to fist pump. It was probably on the list of things that were rude to do in front of the emperor.

“Much appreciated,” Jeb said, glancing around. There were courtiers with tired expressions, the people who attend every game out of brand loyalty. Then there was Vresh, sitting in the spectator seats with her uncle beside her.

What are you doing here? Jeb said with his eyebrows.

Legally adopting my own uncle takes a bit of bureaucracy and the blessing of the emperor, what did you think? You should probably stop staring at me now, because ignoring the emperor is rude, she said with her eyebrows. At least, that’s what Jeb got out of it.

“The true reason I came here is to ask for a rather large favor.”

“I see. And do you have anything to offer in return?”

“I have little aside from myself,” Jeb said, sticking to the script that the valet had drilled into him yesterday.

“Your self is sufficient. Tell me, what trouble do you need my assistance with?”

“I’ve got a nuclear bomb in the Accolade section of my System Status, and it’s gradually killing me,” Jeb said, watching the surrounding courtiers’ eyebrows, hackles, and feather-manes go up.

The emperor paused on his throne for a moment.

“Could you clarify?” the yellow bird-man asked, going off-script.

“Back in Solmnath, I fought a sindio for reasons that are probably classified. In the process of doing so, I entered the Fate dimension to retrieve and disarm a nuclear device. In the process, it became embedded in my fifth-dimensional form. It is literally a part of me now, and I’d appreciate it if the empire could provide me with a referral to someone capable of performing fifth-dimensional surgery.”

“And once the nuclear device is out of you, what happens then?”

Jeb’s mouth opened.

Then it closed.

Leave it to this guy to ask the hard questions.

“We’d have to disarm it.”

Something that they had failed to do the first time.

“And when the bomb kills you, do you anticipate collateral damage?” Emperor Pikaku asked, leaning forward in his throne, seeming more invested than he had been before, now that the problem was truly an interesting one.

“Probably.”

“And do you have a time frame?”

“Longer than two months, would be my best guess,” Jeb said.

“We see. You’ve presented us with a challenging problem, something that we find amusing.” He turned and crooked a finger at one of the nearby clerks, beckoning them closer before he whispered in their ear.

“We will send out inquiries to the empire’s more…powerful acquaintances, and see if any of them are capable of the procedure you require, and if their time can be bought.”

“That’s the result I hoped for,” Jeb said.

“Given your…volatility, we’ll have to have you banned from the city until such a time as you are not carrying humanity’s most atrocious weapon inside you. We beg your forgiveness.”

“No, I get it,” Jeb said with a shrug. He was planning on making himself scarce if he felt like he might explode.

“There is a cottage to the northwest of the city where you may rest while we await responses. Piwaki knows where it is.”

“You want him to blow up the lake house!?” Piwaki asked before clapping his hands over his mouth.

The emperor chuckled. “It’s about fifty miles away from the capital, no neighbors for a similar range. The property is owned by my sister. I’m sure she’d be fine with you living there for a short while. The land is lovely. It would be a fine place to die, if nothing else.”

“That will do nicely,” Jeb said, nodding as Piwaki vibrated where he stood, his neck locked straight. Borg was wisely keeping his mouth shut.

Doing what he could, and giving Jeb a good place to die was about the best offer he expected to get out of these people. Not that throwing Jeb in a prison under the palace would have been a viable strategy, given his explosive nature.

Jeb might have to take a different route than just sitting on his ass, but the idea of sitting on a porch overlooking a peaceful lake moments before exploding did have a romantic feel to it.

Too bad Jeb was too stubborn to die with dignity.

I guess the rest of this meeting is just wrap-up, Jeb thought, glancing around. Well, that was relatively simple.

“Now, our apologies for the belated nature, but we’d like to take this opportunity to bestow on you the rewards granted to you by the Impossible Tutorial.”

The kitri reached off to the side of his throne and retrieved a black babydoll T-shirt, with large white print on the front:

I survived the Impossible Tutorial

And all I got was this stupid

T-SHIRT

Jeb’s jaw hung open, his eyes flickering back and forth, trying to figure out if the entire Kitri Empire was trying to punk him. Even if it was, he couldn’t exactly cuss out the emperor without losing his shot at getting help.

“Uh….” Jeb was at a loss for words as his brain struggled to catch up with the empire offering him a babydoll T-shirt in all seriousness.

No, wait. That joke is too…human.

“Did…Ron set that up?”

“Indeed,” Emperor Big-bird said with a honking chuckle. He shook the shirt lightly, causing motes of light to slough off of it as the shirt unfolded into a chainmail onesie made of a blueish-grey metal, with links so small that he couldn’t even see them at this distance.

“The Myriad Armor can look and feel like anything the user wishes while still offering complete protection from most physical attacks. It’s also self-repairing and heat-moderating.”

Jeb’s jaw dropped.

Sign me the fuck up!

“That’s so practical!”

I have plans for you, a less practical part of Jeb’s mind laughed evilly and rubbed his hands together. Jeb resisted the urge to look at Vresh and picture her in bikini armor.

I’m a simple man. I like stupid shit. And one day, I WILL see a woman in functional bikini armor. Even if I have to give up an absolutely powerful, versatile artifact that would probably save my life multiple times.

Hmm…actually having a hard time justifying that.

Vresh in V-style bikini armor, the tight lines dimpling her crimson skin.

Oop, there it is, justification complete. What was I THINKING? That’s definitely more important than living.

“Yes, Ron thought you would like it, and left it as part of your share.” Emperor Pikaku, Best Emperor, First of His Name, Uniter of the Continent, and super awesome dude shook the armor again, turning it into a handkerchief and folding it before he passed it off to a steward, who carried it over to Jeb.

Jeb suppressed a happy squeal as he shoved the armor in his vest pocket. Squealing didn’t jive with the serious image he’d built up with the world at large. Instead, he gave a stone-faced nod.

“I’ll put it to good use,” Jeb said, keeping his voice gravelly with all the seriousness he could muster. He wasn’t lying. ‘Good’ is subjective.

“Bring the rest around.”

The single cart full of shinies turned out to be three, wrapped around behind the throne.

Each one was covered in a variety of objects, ranging from amazing to butt-clenchingly dangerous.

Does that vial of infinitely replicating magical insects have a crack? Jeb stared for a moment. Nope, just my imagination.

The cart was filled with the bizarre, but a few things stood out to Jeb.

First was a lifelike crystal heart that looked very familiar, down to the striation pattern in the stone. It was about the size of Jeb’s fist, though, so the scale was all wrong; the last one he’d seen was the size of a two-story building.

“Is that…”

The emperor stood up, spreading a hush through the courtiers as he approached, picking up the clear heart.

“The heart of a titan? Yes,” he said with waggling eyebrows. “Think of it like a seed. Bury the heart in a location, and it will begin to draw in Myst and build a body based on the surroundings.”

“Like the World Tortoise and the mountain?” Jeb asked, his eyes following the ultra-dangerous heart.

“It takes a few hundred years, but yes. Our, as you call them, ‘scientists’, begged me to allow them to use this heart to make a titan composed of pure patriotism.”

“How could that go wrong?” Jeb asked sarcastically.

“Yes, I had my reservations as well, so I would prefer you keep this heart locked away.”

“I’m amenable to that.” Jeb didn’t really have that Pokémon bug that made people wanna know what kind of monster they could make by burying the heart in various places.

I mean, unless I bury it in a bathhouse and make a marble bathhouse titan, whose spawned monsters are bathing attendants who—no! Shit, I just caught it!

Jeb shook the thought out of his head and reluctantly decided to do the responsible thing and not dabble with a titan.

Risking his own skin by trying to make Vresh wear bikini armor was one thing, but Jeb couldn’t risk other people’s safety so cavalierly.

Next on the list was…a collection of stamps.

Yay?

Jeb picked them up and frowned. It was an old leather-bound book filled with  stamps. They were old human stamps with Benjamin Franklin on them, pictures of boats, people he didn’t recognize, and insanely low prices.

This one says half a cent.

How is this a magical artifact?

Jeb inspected the label beneath where the leather scrapbook had rested on the cart.

After the Stitching, this particular collection of stamps was steeped in so much Impact of such a specific nature that it spontaneously became magical. There are one thousand five hundred and thirty-seven stamps remaining within. Each stamp, when removed from the book and adhered to an object, will see that object delivered to the intended recipient in a timely manner.

More stamps may be required for heavier objects.

“Well, that’s interesting,” Jeb murmured, setting the book back down. Valuable, but more of a logistical value than anything else.

Next was a compass made of painted wood, but it only had four markings on it: a heart, a gold coin, an eight-pointed star, and a skull. At the moment, the arrow was pointing at the skull.

Human symbolism again, Jeb thought with a frown, inspecting the inscription beneath it.

This compass allows a User to mentally put forward a plan of action, and the compass needle will point towards sex, wealth, happiness, or death, giving a fairly accurate estimation of the tides of fortune.

Oooh. Jeb’s brows rose, and he picked up the compass.

Going on a date with Vresh.

The needle blipped for a moment, moving away from the skull for an instant before re-settling on it.

Yeah, I suppose there’s a good chance she might kill me. What about telling her I think she’s pretty and establishing a relationship built on honesty?

The needle blipped again before re-settling on death.

Okay, let’s establish a control question where I would 100% be sure to get laid.

How about I take my satchel of gold coins down to a high-quality brothel and hire a prostitute for the night?

The needle blipped hard, nearly reaching halfway between sex and death before settling back on death.

Bomb in my chest’s got the damn thing busted, Jeb thought with a scowl. I’ll just hang on to it…just in case it fixes itself. If the emperor had anything to say about Jeb slipping the compass into his pocket, he didn’t bring it up.

There was a case of eighteen wedding rings, a mistake made by a master enchanter. Originally, they were meant to allow the wedded couple to communicate telepathically on command, but there was a misnumbering, and eighteen rings all got the same ID, allowing anyone wearing one of them to talk to all of the other bearers at once.

That’s not bad. I bet a team could benefit from those under the right circumstances, Jeb thought, moving on to the next item.

He could see why the group left these rewards here for him to claim. Aside from the armor Ron had donated, the objects were…rather limited in their scope.

There was a ring shaped like a mobius strip that flickered with strange letters and numbers.

The Ring of Venaxus constantly scrolls with knowledge just barely beyond the viewer’s ability to comprehend. Created as a study aid for a particularly lazy demigod.

“TAKE THE RING!” Borg shouted in his ear, attracting the entire audience’s attention.

“And you are?” the emperor asked, his gaze landing on Borg.

“Borg. I’m a satellite phone inside a terminator packed with memes,” Borg said, offering his hand.

The emperor shook it.

“Eddie says to take the ring.”

“I got it,” Jeb said, picking up the silvery band of metal, watching the strange words and formulae he couldn’t make heads or tails of scroll by.

“What good is stuff I can’t understand?”

“You write it down,” Borg said slowly, as if he were talking to a child. “Then you study until you do understand it, using the information as a—”

“Goalpost,” Jeb said, nodding. “I understand now.” The description did say the knowledge was barely beyond the user’s ability to understand.

The blessing of infinite achievable goalposts was a subtle thing, indeed. A lot of scientists would probably kill for that ring, as it became more valuable the more well-studied you were.

Jeb was pretty sure he was looking at calculus, which he’d never completed, since it wasn’t a required subject.

Eddie would probably see much more interesting things circling the ring.

Stephen Hawking would have seen things that would have provided him the right questions to peel back the true nature of reality and advance science for all of humanity.

Jeb saw calculus.

Well, I’m probably gonna have to do some more studying in the adventuring off-season, you know, assuming I’m still alive at that point.

Jeb slipped the ring onto his other hand, away from his Appraisal ring. He didn’t want the two of them fighting each other for space.

“Are you an intelligent undead? Who made you, and why are you not trying to kill everyone you see?” The emperor seemed really interested in Borg for some reason.

“Well, Ron did, actually. Ron and Eddie. And the reason I’m not eating people willy-nilly is because they fused my consciousness with an AI that is running in tandem with the curse of undeath, sort of providing a system of checks and balances…”

Jeb zoned them out and moved on, checking out the next cart packed with goodies. His eyes wandered through the items like he was browsing at a garage sale, until he found a crystal seemingly grown around a crimson red liquid with a tiny bubble of air in it.

Blood of the first vampire.

DO NOT OPEN.

Hmm… Jeb carefully set it back down and continued perusing.

Deed to Bittersnarl Manor.

*Note* No owner of Bittersnarl Manor has ever returned from a visit. Visiting not recommended.

They trying to kill me? Ooh, an iron lantern, Jeb thought, his gaze continuing along the treasure trove before settling on an antique-looking lantern. He inspected the description.

Fairy-repelling cold-iron lantern.

Imbues normal lamplight with the aspect of cold iron, which fairies find repugnant. Good for traveling through fairy-infested country or putting on your porch to keep those vermin from stealing your babies.

“Hah.” Jeb chuckled as he lifted the lantern. He was struck by the sudden impulse to show it to Smartass, before he realized that the little fairy wasn’t with them.

I hope she’s doing okay. The fairy had a tendency to get into trouble, and part of him wished he’d been able to keep her within line of sight.

Jeb mentally tugged on the bond between the two of them for the first time since he’d tracked her down in the docks. It certainly felt like Smartass was still alive, and…

Guilty!?

What did you do!? Jeb thought, his eye twitching as Borg and the emperor continued to discuss Borg, a subject the undead robot was happy to indulge in.

There was a little spike of panic when she noticed Jeb’s attention on her, then a tidal wave of lavender Myst slammed through the building in the blink of an eye, like an EMP.

The rustle and clicking of every button, every zipper, and every clasp in the room coming undone simultaneously suffused the air. A few pants fell down and bras loosened, but the magical effects were far more concerning.

Every magical device temporarily short-circuited, including the Myst-based overhead lighting that had kept the audience hall bright and shiny. The entire room and everyone in it was plunged into darkness.

“We’re under attack!”

“The magical defenses are down! We’re wide open!” Jeb heard a voice shout, along with the clicking of talons against marble. “Get the emperor to safety!”

I’d be a fool not to take advantage of this, Scion. A woman’s cold voice echoed through the hall as a massive, brilliant white circle opened up beneath Jeb, engulfing nearly the entire audience hall, barely stopping short of the seating.

Jeb’s heart surged, and he made to fly away, but bonds of unbreakable Myst engulfed him like a powerless insect, dragging him down into the glowing light beneath him.

Chapter 9: Railroaded

Queen Mab reclined into her throne in satisfaction, and her courtiers subtly relaxed. If one were to look close enough, they would be able to make out the events that happened in the distance glittering in her left eye. From a distance, it was no more than a twinkle of light.

She gave a minute frown, leaning forward, as if someone had given her unwelcome news, and every heart quickened, afraid of their queen’s displeasure.

The ancient fae’s lips parted, and words that bent the fabric of reality slithered out from between them.

“Jebediah Trapper will not fly.”

She continued to frown, her eye fixed on her scion with a level of focus reserved for only the most damned souls and family. Finally, after an interminable moment, she relaxed back into her throne.

But no matter how she relaxed, her eye never lost that twinkle of light.

A moment later she snorted, as if someone had told a mildly amusing joke.

***Jebediah Trapper***

“Fuudge!” Jeb screamed as he was thrown through a rift in the sky, impacting against a verdant forest floor. He raised his head and spat out some grass, dirt, and leaves, a moment before something cracked against his skull.

He covered his head as objects rained down on top of and around him, erecting a shield of telekinetic Myst.

Thump, thump, THUMP!

Once the rain of debris ended, Jeb raised his head to check his situation.

He was face-to-face with Borg.

“Fudge?” the zombot asked from an inch away.

“I’ve been living in an orphanage full of small children, run by a couple of old ladies. What did you think was gonna happen? Not exactly a bunch of sailors,” Jeb muttered, pushing himself up and away, scanning the scene.

The three carts had tumbled into the portal with him, scattering esoteric and likely dangerous objects all over the forest floor, which was less than ideal.

Jeb’s gaze landed on Piwaki. The kitri valet was hanging by his voluminous silk robes from a massive tree branch. He seemed to have fainted.

Past him was a forest trail covered in soft-looking green moss, creating a winding route that was…ominously inviting.

“Wager a bulb that’s a trap,” Jeb said idly.

“No deal,” a velvety voice said from behind him.

Jeb stiffened and glanced backwards. Vresh was blowing foliage off her arms with a sharp exhale while rebuttoning her shirt.

Jeb whipped his head back around, counting to ‘three Mississippi’ before turning to face her again. When he turned back, the ex-enforcer/current duchess was finished straightening her clothes that had been loosened by the strange blast of…unbuttoning Myst? Undoing Myst? Unchaining Myst? Unconstraining? Those things were pretty unconstrained…

Jeb refocused, tugging on his connection to Smartass. She felt alive, guilty, and more than a little scared, but alive all the same, which was Jeb’s primary concern.

Jeb couldn’t directly communicate with his familiar across the distance, so he just tried to remain calm. No sense getting angry at her now.

Jeb was going to save all that up for when they were face-to-face again.

“How’d you get in the portal?” Jeb asked Vresh. “Weren’t you up in the stands?”

“I ran to the edge to better see what was going on,” Vresh said, rubbing scuffs off of her shiny black horns, glancing up at a shattered branch with a wince. “Someone pushed me from behind. I assume my uncle, but I don’t know for sure.”

The emperor was nowhere to be seen, despite having been standing relatively close to Jeb. Likely because either Mab didn’t want anything to do with him, or simply because the man’s security detail was better than Jeb’s.

Jeb’s security detail awkwardly pushed himself to his feet with a single arm, scanning the location with mechanical precision before looking up at the sun overhead.

“Assuming no time lost, we’ve moved twenty-four degrees north, thirty-two degrees west. Mestikos is that way,” Borg said, pointing unerringly out into the forest.

“Of course, if you wish to return to Solmnath to die in peace instead, that’s that way,” he said, pointing about a hundred and fifty degrees the opposite direction.

“Helpful,” Jeb muttered, staring at the sky and mentally calculating weight.

One eighty for me, two hundred for Vresh, two fifty for the robot, ehh, one forty for the kid. Yeah, I definitely got this.

He’d carried a Jeep across a continent in a day. Getting back to Mestikos with under a thousand pounds was child’s play.

Jeb looked back down and a beam of reflected light caught his attention. It was the titan heart, throbbing and slowly embedding itself into the earth.

“Nope, nope, nope!” Jeb said, snagging the heart before it could disappear into the earth and wiping the dirt and leaves off of it. He latched it awkwardly into the top of his money satchel once it stopped beating.

Whew.

“Anybody got eyes on the blood of the first vampire?” Jeb asked, glancing around.

Piwaki groaned and honked from his upside-down position.

******

Rounding up all the dangerous artifacts was simple, with the exception of the blood of the first vampire, which actively tried to crawl away. But transporting them was a different problem entirely. Each and every one of the most dangerous artifacts had some kind of tamper protection on them that made them impossible to move with Myst, or even move with something that was itself being moved by Myst.

The defenses must have kicked back on after we fell through the portal.

Every time he tried to move the magical objects via Myst, a burst of golden Myst would emerge and interfere. In short, there was no way to fly the dangerous artifacts back to Mestikos.

“You can fly yourself back to the city,” Vresh offered. “I’ll watch them.”

Hmm… Jeb didn’t trust Borg or Piwaki to watch the artifacts while he brought Vresh back home. He could go back to Mestikos, but all he’d find there was chaos and potentially finger-pointing. Plus, he didn’t want to leave Vresh alone in what was presumably Mab’s territory.

It seemed like… It seemed like Mab had pulled off a heist, then obfuscated her real target by sucking in so many random artifacts. If he left Vresh alone, here, with the queen of the fae and a bunch of powerful artifacts…

Jeb didn’t want to think about what might happen. Mab seemed to have some small concern for whether or not he lived or died, but he doubted Vresh benefited from the same consideration.

“I think I’ll stay,” Jeb said. “There’s not much in Mestikos for me right now besides an exhaustive investigation. Plus, I already asked the emperor for a referral, and going back immediately doesn’t seem like the best idea.”

“Your zipper’s undone,” Vresh said, shooting Jeb’s trousers a lingering glance.

“So it is,” Jeb muttered, looking down. Gives me an idea. Jeb shrugged, taking the enchanted armor handkerchief out of his pocket and shaking it, picturing his favorite pair of pajamas from before the Stitching.

A riot of delicate Myst surrounded the cloth, and a moment later, a fuzzy pair of pants and a soft, oversized T-shirt with a picture of Sonic the Hedgehog manifested in front of him. Jeb quickly got changed into the nightclothes.

“Why are you dressing like that?” Vresh asked. “You look like a fool.”

“I figure I’m probably going to meet my great-grandma soon,” Jeb said, feeling breezy in the oversized clothing. “And when you meet someone important, there’s a social expectation that you dress in a way that reflects your respect for them and their station,” Jeb said as he folded his old clothes and set them on the forest floor, placing the blue scroll in his fuzzy polyester pocket.

“I see,” Vresh said with a faint smile.

It was a small token of defiance, but in the fifth dimension, small tokens of defiance were the same as armor. And fairies lived and breathed that shit.

Once they had cinched Jeb’s pants into a workable backpack and stuffed all the priceless artifacts into them, they got Piwaki down from the tree, and slapped the big bird awake.

“Honk! What is this? What’s going on!?” the valet demanded.

“You’re currently in the Death Wilds,” Jeb said.

Piwaki’s beak fell open, and he started hyperventilating.

Vresh smacked the bird again.

“Calm down. You’ve got some of the most powerful people in the empire here with you. And whatever that is,” she said, jerking her thumb at Borg, who was frowning thoughtfully as he glanced around.

“Does something feel different about this place?”

“If I had to guess?” Jeb asked as he breathed in the air that felt thick and alive, laden with potent meaning. “I’d say Fate is closer to the surface in the Death Wilds.”

Jeb hadn’t been able to tell when he’d been in the Impossible Tutorial, because his Myst had been low, his experience limited. But all the shenanigans of the last year had given him a bit of a nose for it, and the Death Wilds were steeped in the fifth dimension.

“Try not to say things you don’t mean while we’re here,” Jeb said quietly, his gaze landing on the pristine trail leading them into the distance. “And breathe defiance.”

Jeb pulled out the compass and pictured himself going each cardinal direction. The needle twitched off death hardest when he aimed to the north.

“Let’s go this way,” Jeb said, pointing north, ninety degrees away from the convenient trail.

“But there’s a trail right there,” Piwaki said.

“Yes. It’s a convenient trail at the exact point we were teleported to by an unknown force.”

“That makes it…bad?” Piwaki asked.

Vresh did Jeb a favor and cuffed Piwaki in the back of the head, following Jeb’s lead as he began to hack his way through the underbrush telekinetically, forging his own trail.

“Hey guys, do you think a robot can form a Myst Core?” Borg asked from behind them.

“No, but an undead can,” Vresh responded. “Although, they are in the extreme minority. Usually such creatures are accompanied by a calamity the likes of which are written about in the histories of dead cities.”

“Cool, cool.”

Jeb glanced over his shoulder and saw Borg walking behind them, looking innocent. His eyes narrowed.

“Alright, spill it. What’d you do?”

“It’s nothing major,” Borg said, wiggling his stump of an arm. “Just a little self-repair. It’ll take a few days, but I should be able to get my arm back.”

Jeb turned and inspected the stump with his senses as closely as he could. The Myst around Borg’s missing arm flickered like the white noise on an old television, rather than flowing like string the way a human might control their Myst.

“What’s your Core?”

“-tion,” Borg mumbled.

“What was that?”

“Creation.”

“As in creating something from nothing?” Jeb asked.

“There are several legendary Myst users who were reputed to be able to summon gold and other simple elements from Myst itself,” Vresh whispered, eyeing Borg askance.

“Creating anything from nothing,” Borg said. “Turns out, your simple, squishy human brains just can’t process that much information at once. All organics seem to share this limitation.” He held up his hand and a stunningly complex formation of Myst swirled around his palm for an instant, coalescing into a ladybug which promptly opened its carapace and flew away.

“Unfortunately, the energy requirements of undelineated creation are prohibitive, and my natural Myst intake is dictated by my prism array, so I must make things gradually, piecemeal, or very small.”

“Did you just create life?” Piwaki asked, his gaze following the ladybug.

Jeb shrugged it off. Eh.

“Just keep your hardware upgrades within reason.” Jeb could already see why the robot had chosen that particular Myst Core. He could create microchips designed by an AI at the atomic level and modify himself at will. It’s not the quantity—it’s the quality.

In addition to neurotoxins, gold bullion, spy cameras, etc.

“You wound me, sirrah,” Borg said, putting his hand to his chest. “I have already sworn myself to your service, and whatever I do must needs be in your best interest…. Do you think I would look good with one of those big, beefy-looking metal arms like Cable has?”

Borg flexed his skinny, withered arm to demonstrate. Jeb could see a little of the robot frame underneath a part where the rotting flesh had receded around Borg’s prism array.

Now, Jeb couldn’t help but picture the grisly work of Ron and Eddie literally removing a cadaver’s bones and replacing them with metal.

“Actually, some cosmetic improvements would probably help your social interactions a lot,” Jeb admitted, turning forward.

“I was thinking the same thing—”

Jeb’s eyes widened when the shadow leapt out of the woods and tackled him into next week. He was catapulted backwards and to the side, landing him deep in the thick forest undergrowth.

“Fudge!” Jeb shouted as the amorphous creature manifested claws and tried to scratch his eyes out.

“GAH!” Jeb unleashed a blast of Myst, scattering the creature into motes of darkness and making the trees themselves shake as the wave brushed past them.

“Jeb, what’s going on?”

“You didn’t see the thing!?” Jeb asked.

“What thing?” Vresh asked, her voice rising a little in concern.

Jeb scanned the surrounding woods, his heart thumping hard in his chest.

There was a tug on his senses, and Jeb glanced to the side, where the motes were beginning to coalesce into the shadow.

It had short legs, and long arms with talons that would make Freddy Krueger jealous. A bit like the shadow of a silverback gorilla crossed with aforementioned supervillain.

It also had friends. Jeb’s eyes narrowed as he scanned the woods.

“Hey, are you guys only visible to people with a lot of Myst, or are you just here for me?” Jeb asked, not really expecting an answer.

He didn’t get one.

“Who are you talking to— Oh my goddess!” Piwaki shouted in alarm as Jeb flung out an arm and unleashed a devastating blast of Myst, scattering the monster and sending a shockwave through the forest.

The other shadows creeped a bit closer.

Okay, are they real or an illusion? Jeb thought to himself. He patted his face, finding the scratches still painful and bleeding.

“Hey guys, do I have cuts on my face?” Jeb asked.

“You do,” Borg said, nodding. “What’s going on?”

Jeb glanced behind them, toward the convenient path through the woods that they had left behind.

It was completely shadow-free.

Jeb narrowed his eyes. I hate being railroaded.

***Elsewyr***

Queen Mab’s lips twitched as the human left the path he’d been given.

“Ungrateful spawn,” she said, with a modicum of amusement.

“Jebediah Trapper will. Stay.” Her eye twitched. “On. The.”

There was violent movement in the twinkle in her eye, followed by an uncontrolled wave of Myst backlash crashing down around them like a waterfall.

Mab’s eye twitched again, and her nose began to bleed.

She reached up with a silk handkerchief and wiped the drop of blood away before incinerating it. She did not continue speaking immediately.

When she finally spoke again, her courtiers withered before her thunderous expression.

“There’s another player in this game.”

***Jeb***

“Gah!” The shadows leapt at him one after another, trying to knock him around like a ping pong ball. Every time he blasted one to smithereens, one more would recoalesce, and another would spawn out of nothing.

There were starting to be a lot of them, now.

“Jeb, what do we do!?” Vresh asked, her voice concerned.

Aww, she’s worried about me. That’s—oh god, there’s more!

Jeb turned his Myst into a flame whip and began lashing through the creatures like a trailblazer chopping down underbrush.

That only worked for so long, because they recoalesced faster when they weren’t completely shredded.

One got through his defenses and knocked him to the ground, its talons peeling away sections of telekinetic armor as it tried to eviscerate him, and the rest piled on top.

Vresh rushed forward to help Jeb, which seemed to irritate the creatures dogpiling him, as several slashed at Vresh’s unprotected face.

The duchess’s skin was barely scratched, but her body was catapulted backwards, slamming into a tree.

“Don’t help me!” Jeb shouted past the shadow. “We’ll probably survive this! I think they’re just after me!”

“Real comforting!” Vresh said as she sat up, her gaze scanning the forest, passing dozens of shadows without acknowledging them.

During Jeb’s instant of distraction, a claw slipped through his armor and prodded him in the stomach.

“Agh, you mm…” Jeb bit his lip before he said something untrue in the heat of the moment.

I need to get rid of these things somehow, but nothing seems to work. Jeb just didn’t have the means to destroy them. His fire whip was even less effective than regular telekinesis, and Jeb didn’t have any other ‘spells’ on tap. He needed something way more destructive, both on a physical and spiritual level.

Jeb experienced a flash of inspiration, and he could feel his face twisting into a cruel grin.

Jeb reached into his pocket and dropped the telekinetic barrier around him.

The shadows fell towards him, and Jeb could’ve sworn he saw an expression of surprise on their blank faces the moment before he touched the rolled-up blue scroll into a creature’s chest.

Jeb could feel the delight in the scroll as it reached out and touched the essence of the shadow creature, consuming it whole.

The shadow burst into a perfect sculpture made of ash before tilting forward and collapsing on top of Jeb, covering him in unnaturally fine ash.

“Goddess, where did that come from!?” Piwaki asked, flinching away from the sudden appearance of the ash-statue.

“Ahahahahah!” Jeb cackled as he swung the scroll around violently, hitting each and every shadow ape above him with a gentle, loving tap from the scroll of ashing. The enjoyment of wanton destruction was infectious, and Jeb and the scroll seemed to feed off each other.

Jeb climbed out of the pile of ash and eyeballed the remaining shadows.

They were edging away from him.

“Oh, no you don’t,” Jeb growled, holding out his open hand.

The blue leather scroll lifted up off his palm, buoyed by a powerful string of telekinetic Myst.

It shot out with a crack of displaced air, burrowing a hole through the closest shadow before twisting violently and chasing down each of the creatures, turning every single one of them into a pile of ashes in a matter of seconds.

You have gained a level!

You are now level 40!

“Yeah! Don’t fudge with Jebediah Trapper!” Jeb shouted, although he had to admit it lacked a certain ‘Jeb’ flair without the hard cursing.

Still, he was in a good post-‘near-death’ mood. First level in a year.

“Status.”

Jebediah Trapper

Mystic Trapsmith, Level 40

Accolades: Krusker’s Brawn, Siren’s Cunning, R-R-RubU’s Mysteries, Gresh’s Subtlety, Innovator, Ì̴̸̵̡̢̪̙͔̻̠͋ͥ̓ͥ̒͊̕̕͠ a̸̸̵̡̦̫͕̟̞͓̽͆͒ͣ̒̈́ͣ̐͑̚͜͝m̴̴̸̙͍̟̫̻͖̝͕̟̀͆ͫ́̒ͫ̔̐͝͝ в̴̴̸̡̠̞͙̝͇̻̓͒ⷡ͐̓̀ⷡ̓̓͒e̸̵̵̫̻̪͍̪͚̝͊̾ͤ̔ͤ͋̐͘͝͝c̸̴̴̡̢̞̪̼͙͖͚̫̈́̿ͨ̔̔ͨ͐̿̕̕͝o̸̴̸̪͙͖͚̘̝͚̠̾͛ͦ͊̔̽ͦ̈́̈́͛̚m̵̴̵̞̝͚̫̙̻̘̝͕͒̔ͫ̔͐ͫ͆̈́̕͝ë̸̸̴̡̡̙̘͙͓̠̞̠́͌̽ͤ̓̀ͤ͛̕͝ D̵̵̸͚̠̦͔͉̺͎̼̘́͊ͩ́͋̐ͩ̓̓̔͝è̴̴̵̢̡͇͖̟͔͓͖́ͤ̈́͌ͤ͆͛͛͝͝a̵̴̸͉͖͇̠͙͙͕͔͇͆͒ͣ͐̓͐ͣ́̾̒͝ᴛ̵̴̙̟̺͔̻̼͒̔͋ⷮ̾͘͝h̸̸̸͕͍̻͔̺̀̿ͪ̓͆́ͪ̿̾͑͜͝,̸͍͖̺͐̾̓̓̚ ᴛ̵̸͚̼̟͑ⷮ͊͘͜͝͠h̵̸̸̟͖͔͎͔̝͔͑ͪ̈́͊̽ͪ́͛́͘͜͝è̸̸̴̞̫̟͎̟͓̘͚͓̈́ͤ̓͌͛ͤ͐͘ D̸̸̴̢̡͍͍̺͉͎̦͑͒̽ͩ͌͐̓ͩ͒̔͜e̵̸̵̢̪͉͎͍̫̠͉͌ͤͤ̔̀̒͘̕͝͠s̸͎̫͇̓͑͛͛͝ᴛ̸̸̢̠̻͇͙͎̒͋ⷮ̐̓͒r̸̸̵͙͎͇̠̼̺̦̔̈́̈́ͬ͑̈́ͬ̔͌̐͜͝o̴̴̸̢̦͖̪͉͎̦͐͌ͦ̒̒̀ͦ̀̿͌͘͜y̸̪͇̙̔͝e̴̸̴̡̝͕̠̫̝̟̿̔ͤ̿̒ͤ̽̓͘͜r̸̸̵͖̼̫͓͉̝̫͌̓̽ͬ̽͛̐ͬ̾̈́͆͜ o̴̴̴̝̺̦̺̪̙͑̐̔ͦ̽͐ͦ͊̐̒͠f̴̼͍͖͑̀͘ W̸͔̻̒̿͐͜ö̵̸̸̡̢̠̫͉̺͎͚̪́̓͌ͦ͛ͦ̈́̔͛͝r̴̴̵̢̼̦͍̼͙͙̐ͬ͌̔̈́ͬ͋̽͘͘͝l̵̟̞̘͊͒͒d̴̴̴̡̫̞͔̟̪̟̾͋̀ͩ̐̒́ͩ͆͝͠s̸̝̺̪͑͌̽͛͛

Body 52 +

Myst 130 +

Nerve 52 +

Abilities: Mystic Trigger

1 Ability point remaining.

Jeb poked Body, raising it to fifty-three before dismissing the status screen.

That’ll buy me a little extra time.

“Jeb, are you okay?” Vresh asked, approaching him, her warm hand radiating heat through his body as she placed it on his shoulder, looking into his eyes with concern.

Jeb scoffed, crossing his arms and putting on his ‘cool guy’ persona.

“Yeah, I’m—” Jeb’s attempt to play it cool backfired horribly when a tickle in Jeb’s throat drove him to his knees, hacking and coughing violently into the grass, struggling to breathe as he dislodged a massive wad of bloody flesh, which immediately began to smolder on the forest floor.

Once Jeb’s breathing had recovered, he glanced up at Vresh, forcing a sheepish grin.

“I’ve been better,” he admitted.

Error. Recalculating Body. 53 à 52

Error. Recalculating Myst. 130 à 133

Shut up, you.

Chapter 10: Trouble in Paradise

The lights had come back on, but Smartass was afraid of coming out of the shadows she hid in, because everyone seemed to be taking this whole thing way more seriously than she expected.

That bird-guy told me it was the right thing to do, so shouldn’t everyone be happy?

Smartass had a nagging suspicion that the kitri had lied. Soldiers ran back and forth, shouting at the top of their lungs non-stop, looking for the ‘culprit’.

I’m not a culprit…

Am I?

Smartass held her hand over her mouth as another troop of soldiers stomped past, their steel boots clattering against the stone hallways. A moment later, the door opened, and someone poked their head in, casting their gaze across the small room.

There was the clatter of someone beating on something outside the door. “Thing’s still on the fritz. It can’t tell if there’s zero or fifty people in there.”

Smartass was behind the cabinet, in a space a normal creature couldn’t hope to fit, and she fervently prayed that was enough.

The sound of boots entered the room, and Smartass bit her lip, her heartbeat spiking.

Clack, clack, clack….

She didn’t dare heave a sigh of relief when the boots turned around and left the way they’d come. But she did sag, leaning back against the wall.

Crack.

The wall shifted, the masonry cracking softly as it was displaced.

The boots stopped, turned around.

Smartass’s panic reached a crescendo as she turned around and inspected the wall that had given her away, and saw that the plaster had cracked in the shape of a small doorway, the kind a person might crawl through.

To a fairy, it was plenty big.

With a desperate strength, Smartass pushed it open a little further, slipping inside before closing the door.

“I think I heard something from the storeroom. Help me toss it,” came the voice and more footsteps.

It was only a matter of time before they found the door.

And with that, I’m gone, Smartass thought, tiptoeing down the secret passage barely big enough for an adult to crawl through.

Fairies one, ancient palaces with secret passageways zero, Smartass thought, suppressing an evil chuckle and some melodramatic finger-wiggling. She didn’t have enough leeway to cackle, even though she really wanted to. Part of her enjoyed sneaking around under people’s noses, no matter the situation.

The rest of her was scared shitless.

It’s gonna be okay. People think you’re cute and will definitely forgive you for any mistakes you may have allegedly made. Assuming you’re still alive by then.

The tunnel twisted and turned, branching into multiple paths. Smartass shrugged and picked one, padding silently down the path, blindly taking turn after turn.

Finally, there was a sliver of light in the distance. A sliver of light that seemed to flutter as she came closer.

Smartass reached out and touched it.

Cloth. A tapestry or curtain or something? It was made from heavy cloth that wouldn’t allow a hint of light through it, only around.

“What’s the word?” an old bird-lady’s voice sounded from beyond the curtain.

Smartass bit her lip, torn between the desire to peep on people, and the desire to stay alive.

“They found a container with residual Myst from Kiwifui.”

“Isn’t he dead?”

“Yes, ma’am, but the rogue often sold his Myst to the less-than-upright as a way to make ends meet. We feel that the culprit acquired a substantial amount of it. We believe it was an attempt to lower the palace’s defenses and attack the emperor. He is safe at the moment, but we don’t know for sure if something else slipped through the portal, so we’re going to ask you ladies to sit tight for now.”

A chorus of feminine groans met that statement, making Smartass’s eyebrows rise.

Sounds like there’s a lot of people in there.

Her curiosity finally beat out her self-preservation, as it always did, and Smartass peeked from behind the curtain.

All she saw was a giant bird-eye.

“Eeek!” Smartass shrieked, bolting backwards, but it wasn’t fast enough.

A massive clawed hand lashed forward and cinched tight around her midsection before hauling her back out into the open air of the room, wriggling like a worm on a hook.

“Hey, look what I found!” the kitri said, holding Smartass high in the air. From this vantage, Smartass could make out no less than a dozen of the dull-feathered kitri women and one heavily armed melas fellow with squinty eyes who was already coming this way!

You leave me no choice! Smartass thought, deploying her lethal Fairy Bite. She hunched over and bit down on the pebbly skin behind the wicked claws around her waist. Take this!

“I think it’s biting me. It feels like a little pinch,” her captor said.

“Ikiwapi, what are you doing? What is that!?” the older kitri woman said.

“Umm… I think it’s a fairy,” the kitri said, holding Smartass out.

“Unhand me, you dingy birds!” Smartass demanded, beating on the unyielding talons with her fists of fury.

“It speaks!” one of the bird ladies said, covering her gaping beak as her feathers fluffed out in surprise.

“It’s forbidden,” the melas said, snatching Smartass out of the kitri woman’s hands. “I would lay down good odds that this creature has something to do with the events of the day.”

“Couldn’t it have wandered in when the palace’s barriers were down?” one of the kitri women asked.

“Fairies are shifty, evil little monsters who will steal anything not nailed down, but they can’t directly lie to your face,” the melas said, turning his burning yellow gaze down at Smartass.

“So, little creature, did you have anything to do with the events of today?”

“Of course,” Smartass said, her stomach sinking. “Just by existing, I’m taking part in the events of today, aren’t I? I would have a hard time giving you a flat ‘no’, wouldn’t I?”

“Did you set the bomb that lowered the defenses of the palace twelve minutes ago?”

“Umm….” Smartass’s eyes drifted away from the melas man’s gaze. “What’s a palace, really? Just an extra-large building everyone calls a palace. By that definition…yep, yep, it was me.”

“I thought so,” the melas said, his grip tightening dangerously around her waist. “Where did you get the bomb, fairy? A creature like you doesn’t have an agenda beyond stealing sweets like a rat in a pantry.”

“Rude,” Smartass said, trying to draw attention away from her bulging pockets.

“Sir Xenok, I recognize that fairy!” a kitri woman called from the side of the room. “She was there when I did the human’s makeup. She came in as part of Mr. Trapper’s entourage. I think she’s his familiar!”

“So Trapper is behind this, eh?” The royal guard’s eyes narrowed.

“NO!” Smartass hastily corrected, her stomach dropping violently. If she got Jeb killed because of this, she’d…feel bad things. A lot. “He had no idea what I was doing!”

“Then who gave you the—hurk!”

The melas’s words came to a lurching halt as a claw emerged from his back, glowing with ominous crimson Myst. The enchanted talons whooshed past her head, parting a few locks of hair before the guard’s grip loosened, dropping Smartass to the floor.

“AIII!” Smartass’s scream as she plummeted to the ground was drowned out by the dozen women reacting to their protector’s demise.

“Ladies, please,” a voice echoed from behind the melas before he slumped over, revealing a rather large-framed kitri…with no flesh. “Act in a manner befitting your station.”

The undead creature held his hands up in a placating motion. “Unless I miss my guess, you all must be the imperial harem of Damsels, the source of the emperor’s strength. Lovely to meet you.”

“How did you get past the guards!?” the one closest to him demanded.

“I’ll admit, they didn’t make it easy,” the creature said, fingering a ragged hole in his clothes where he’d presumably been stabbed.

“What do you want, abomination?” the oldest kitri woman said as the others crowded behind her. Her arm was tucked behind her back, making funny hand signs that Smartass couldn’t understand.

Smartass was more concerned with getting as far away from the scary thing as possible. The melas was scary, but this thing was fear itself. She could taste fear, experience dread with every sense. It was nearly overwhelming.

“Don’t you recognize me, Kiwipa?” the creature said, stepping forward. “It wasn’t that long ago that your Favor was mine.” The glowing specks in his empty sockets flickered.

The older woman’s beak gaped. “Yikipa,” she breathed.

“Yes,” he said, slowly approaching her. “It’s me, old friend, the will and might of the empire. The time has come for you to honor your vow to serve me. Like the emperors of ages past who were sent to the afterlife with their loyal concubines, your love will know no death.”

“Your son will stop the monster you have become,” she whispered.

“How little you know, sweet concubine,” the undead creature said gently. “My son suffers from an unfortunate weakness of the heart. He has personally housed me under this palace for the last five years because he couldn’t bear to part with his father.”

“No.”

“Oh yes. Even now, my stupid boy protects the wrong investment—that demigod he’s been raising in secret—rather than the pillars of the empire. He believes I would go after the shiny new toy he’s bragged of rather than his foundation. He truly has much to learn about the brutality of warfare. Perhaps this shall be the lesson he needs. Or perhaps not.”

The kitri woman made a sharp motion with her hand behind her back, and all the women in the room spoke as one, reaching out and placing small tokens, coins, bits of fabric, and one feather-clip into the clothes of the girl nearest the center of the group.

“I grant my Favor to Iyaki!”

A dazzling light descended on one of the younger kitri women, nearly blinding Smartass along with the creature, who flinched before flickering forward, moving between eyeblinks.

The lead kitri woman threw herself in the former emperor’s path, and was immediately impaled upon the undead’s talons. For a moment, the former emperor held the dying kitri in a manner that was almost romantic, his hand cradling her head.

“Iyaki, you cannot win! You must run, warn Pika—” Her words were cut off as the undead snapped her neck, causing her entire body to spasm violently.

“No!” one of the Damsels screamed, backing away. But the horror didn’t stop there.

The skeletal bird turned the dead woman’s beak towards his, then opened his own. A crimson Myst writhed out of his mouth, moving like a living thing as it quested around the dead kitri’s face, looking for all the world like a worm tasting fertile earth.

Then it struck. It pried open the dead kitri’s jaws and began to pulse, filling her with the tainted Myst until it began to gleam from her staring eyes.

A moment later, the former emperor dropped the corpse to the ground.

“Iyaki, step forward and receive my blessing,” he said, motioning with a crooked talon.

The young kitri woman that the light had descended on…bolted.

What followed next was fast and bloody. The concubines threw themselves in the undead creature’s path as the one who’d received their Favor stayed one step ahead of the former emperor, bouncing off the walls and ceiling in a wild display of desperate acrobatics before running out the door, the stone floor acting like soft cheese beneath her claws.

A moment later, Smartass was left alone in a room full of bloody corpses with a mad former emperor drenched in the blood of concubines.

“Ah well, can’t win ‘em all,” the undead muttered to himself before kneeling beside a limp body and repeating the Myst-worm-thing on the corpse. It was no less disgusting the second time.

Smartass suppressed a violent shudder and waited until the undead creature’s back was turned before she slowly began to climb to her feet and back away towards the escape tunnel.

The blood on the floor made an imperceptible sticking sound as Smartass pulled herself off of it.

The bird-skeleton froze, his head cocked.

Aw, shoot.

Smartass’s heart leapt into her mouth and she tried to turn, but the creature was many times faster than she was, flickering around and snatching her up before she had even turned away from him.

“What is this?” the undead asked, his head cocked to the side as his flickering gaze inspected Smartass. “A fairy.”

He inhaled without lungs, and Smartass froze, feeling the Myst around her enter the creature’s nostrils. Well, this is it. You lived longer than most fairies. You had a good run.

“An unappetizing fairy. Your Myst tastes of poison and metal.”

“Ummmm. Yeah! That’s right! My owner has a nasty, nasty bomb inside him, and if you eat me, the Impact inside him could destabilize and you could blow up too!”

Shoot, I said ‘owner’. Stupid, stupid, stupid!

“Is that so?”

“Maybe?” Smartass squeaked.

“How unorthodox. Hmmm… Tell you what, little fairy: Since your kind is so fond of Deals, how about you don’t warn anyone about me, and I don’t kill you? Does that sound fair?”

“I can’t do that,” Smartass blurted.

“Oh?”

“My…” Don’t say owner. “...guy friend, we’re connected by a Familiar Deal. I can’t not warn him. I literally can’t make that Deal.”

“Hmm… Loyalty is something to be lauded. I suppose I’ll have to keep you on hand until such a time as your warnings hold no value. It shouldn’t take longer than a minute or two.”

Smartass’s heart sank as he set her down on the ground, his gaze making it implicitly clear that if she were to run, he would kill her.

“Stay there, and out of the way, small one,” he said, defiling another corpse. “I don’t have much time to share my blessing.”

Behind him, the first body he’d defiled began to twitch.

Kiwipa. Her name was Kiwipa.

***Emperor Pikaku, Uniter of the Continent, Ruler of Mestikos, level 328***

“Ahem, let’s see,” Pikaku said, referring to his list.

“Casey Thompson the Third,” he said, pushing his Myst out into the environs as he thought of the toddler.

“That’s me,” Casey said from his lap.

“Yes, that’s you,” Pikaku acknowledged.

“Why call me? I’m here.”

“It’s to mitigate temporal chicanery, and make sure you are here with me.”

“I don’t get it.”

“I’ll explain later. In the meantime, I’ve got a list to go through.”

Pikaku cleared his throat again, about to speak the name at the top of his list.

Kiwipa, the aged leader of my harem.

The woman had served under his father in more ways than one, and was practically his aunt. Needless to say he never had sex with her, but that was beside the point of the imperial harem.

The point was to grant the emperor their Favor.

“Kiwip—” Pikaku’s jaw dropped as vital energy drained out of him.

Pikaku felt it the instant their Favor left him.

There were many people among the ruling class with levels in the hundreds, and honestly, after level two hundred, individual levels became almost meaningless and exceedingly difficult to obtain.

How, then, does an emperor gain enough strength to rise head and shoulders above all the others?

The answer: the Damsel Class. Available only to women with a certain suite of qualities, they boosted the power of those who held their favor by a large percentage, and it was multiplicative.

Wars had been fought over possession of even one, which was why the emperor’s dozen concubines was such a monumental achievement, granting him power more in line with a demigod at an effective level of four thousand seven hundred and seventy-seven.

And then, in the space of a handful of breaths, it all but vanished.

Someone’s kidnapping them! That’s what this attack was for! To create the opportunity to steal the greatest force in the empire!

Pikaku leapt to his feet, setting Casey the Third on the ground.

“Casey, you’re going to have to stay here for a moment.”

“No!” Casey shouted. “Don’t wanna. This place is scary!” She stomped her tiny little foot in the center of the reinforced vault only used to protect the most important people from the worst magical attacks. The place was ominously lit by flickering lanterns and filled with shadows from the jagged-edged murals on the floor, walls and ceiling, which were carved out of solid slabs of reinforced faradan.

“This isn’t up for debate. People are in danger and I have to deal with it. It’s my duty.”

“Why?” the precocious one-year-old asked, deploying ‘the question’.

“I’ll explain when I get back,” Pikaku said, hunching down, claws finding purchase on the ground. Then he jumped through the reinforced udium vault door his guards had ensconced them behind, startling the guard outside half to death.

“My lord, what—”

He was already gone.

Pikaku ran through the halls as fast as the air would let him, feeling like he was swimming through molasses. As he sped past confused and startled guards, he oriented unerringly on their last known location.

Why does this damnable palace have to be so uselessly big? Every second was precious.

It wasn’t long before he smelled the blood.

Outside the harem’s secure chamber, the dozen royal guards and two enforcers over level one hundred were splayed about the room, their bodies bearing grievous wounds, killed right where they stood by a force seemingly beyond comprehension.

Among the grooves and slashes in the stone left by the violence, there were claw marks on the stone halls, heading away, but they were small. A woman. One of them got away, by naming her as their champion?

Smart girls.

She would be able to point out exactly who Pikaku would be annihilating for this. The culprit was already as good as dead. His concubines wouldn’t give their favor to anyone but him.

Pikaku’s mind shut down when he saw the blood.

But…why?

There was eleven women’s worth of blood covering the chamber. It was a grisly scene that none of them could have survived, but there were no bodies. None at all. Someone had come in, killed all but one of his harem, then taken their corpses.

There was no value in a dead Damsel. None at all.

In the corner of the room, there was a small humanoid creature with undersized insectoid wings, her hands raised in supplication.

“I didn’t do it,” Smartass whispered, her body covered in flecks of blood, standing beside two pools of crimson.

“Who. Did?” Pikaku gritted, his vision dyed red.

“Sire, it’s the crypt!” a voice called out behind him, evoking an icy dread in his spine. “The prisoner has escaped and the high priestess has been murdered!”

“No…”

For the first time in a long time, Emperor Pikaku, Uniter of the Continent, Ruler of Mestikos, felt like a helpless child.

Chapter 11: Cabin in the Woods

The forest no longer seemed to be angry at them. That was good.

Maybe not less angry, Jeb thought, bathing in the vibe of disapproval that he felt pressing in on him from every angle; like he’d just jumped into a deep pool of angry stares.

More like it had realized that getting rid of them was more effort than it was worth.

After the sun began to go down, Jeb created a tiny filament of plasma and held it above their heads as they walked, reinventing the magical lightbulb.

The trees seemed to grow more ominous as the sun went down, their shadows looming large around them.

Piwaki was taking it the worst.

“It feels like we’ve been walking forever!” Piwaki groaned from the middle of the pack. They had to keep him near the middle of the group, because out of the four of them, he was the least capable of defending himself.

He was also the least capable of shutting up.

“Once again,” Jeb said, glancing over his shoulder, “do not say things without thinking. There’s a good chance that whenever you say those words, you’re making the walk longer.”

“How can that be?” Piwaki asked.

“Because thoughts have power here,” Jeb said, glancing around and checking the compass. They weren’t walking in a straight line, exactly. Instead, Jeb was heading in the general direction of happiness, which meandered about a bit.

Now it was dead ahead, where the forest parted just enough to make out a clearing in the distance.

Jeb squinted his eyes, barely making out what looked like logs stacked on top of one another, overgrown with moss.

Hmm.

They pushed ahead, and the next time Jeb raised his head, the view was the same.

We’ve been walking for ten minutes or so. It should have gotten closer.

This time, Jeb kept walking with his head up, watching the moss-covered logs gradually grow closer. Okay, it seems to be getting closer. He was carefully picking his way through the underbrush when a rope-thin, yet sturdy root caught his foot and sent him tumbling to the ground.

When Jeb raised his head, the logs were once again at a distance.

Frowning, Jeb peered behind him. Vresh and Borg were giving him and the distant clearing contemplative looks. Piwaki was oiling his beak and claws with some kind of wax.

“Borg, gimme a bunch of rocks,” Jeb said, holding out his hand.

“Right-o.” Borg squatted down and began digging pebbles out of the loamy soil and tossing them to Jeb.

Jeb flung the pebble forward, watching it carefully as it sailed into the distance. For just a moment, he lost track of it, and that was that; the thing was gone. In its place, the façade of a distant cottage rippled, and Jeb thought he could barely make out figures in the distance.

If his Myst hadn’t been so high, Jeb didn’t think he would’ve seen anything at all.

“Hey!” Piwaki’s cry attracted Jeb’s attention as he rubbed a scuff out of his sleeve, peering behind them. Jeb’s pebble lay on the ground beside the kitri.

“Another one,” Jeb said, judging the previous trajectory.

“Here you go,” Borg said, tossing him another.

Jeb raised his aim and nudged it a bit more to the left, closing his eyes before he flung the rock forward.

The next pebble caught Piwaki in the back of the head.

“Ow!” The kitri rubbed the back of his head, glancing between Jeb’s hands and behind them. “Was that you?”

“Seems that way,” Jeb said. “My question is…are we in a non-Euclidean hot dog or hamburger?”

It would not be good if they had somehow become entrapped in another complete bubble of twisted space. Although this one does appear to be different from the tutorial. It seemed to be more concerned with preventing them from realizing than the previous one had.

Especially how it waited until he wasn’t looking to mess with space.

That felt more like fae magic than Pharosian magic. There was a test of wills, a subtle misdirection inherent in the wall. It tried to make you think if you just tried hard enough, you could get past it, and that hyperfocus would be your undoing.

The bubble made by the gods didn’t care what you thought. It simply was.

Jeb took the third rock from Borg’s hand and tossed it sideways, taking a step back to avoid pinging himself with his own rock.

Nothing.

Jeb tried throwing backwards and to the other side.

None of them wrapped around and came back to them from the other direction, even his experimental fling with his Myst that broke the sound barrier.

So. We’re in a space taco, Jeb thought, thumbing his chin.

It would probably be more accurate to call it a wall of twisted space surrounding the clearing, but somehow the idea of a space taco sounded like more fun.

The good news was, they could leave any time they wanted.

The bad news was that his compass blinked off death and towards happiness pretty darn hard when he thought about going there. And it was going to be difficult to get there.

Alright, I guess the question is whether I should follow up on this, or simply find a more constructive use of my time.

Just because getting past the barrier of warped space indicated happiness, it didn’t necessarily mean he wasn’t going to die. The needle always swung back to death, after all.

On the other hand, it’s not like I have any other ideas for how to disarm the bomb in my soul.

Jeb was fairly sure he couldn’t gain the proficiency with Myst and the infrastructure he would need to get it out over the course of the next six months. Vex had the infrastructure, but trying to take it from him was hopeless, and the ancient creature was more interested in seeing what happened than in anything Jeb could offer him.

So I guess the question is…why not poke around for the fun of it? Worst-case scenario, he’d die. He was already on that route, anyway. Best-case scenario, he’d find some tidbit he could leverage with Vex, the gods, or Mab to get them to save his life.

And even if neither of the above happened, it would satisfy his curiosity.

Yep. Math checks out.

“We’re camping here tonight,” Jeb said, sitting down as he inspected the distant forest, wondering how he was going to get past the wall without moving.

“Here?” Piwaki asked, sounding absolutely shocked. “Shouldn’t we rent a room at an inn to sleep, or something?”

Vresh raised a brow. “And where exactly do you think you’re going to find an inn in the middle of the Death Wilds?” she asked, sitting down and gathering together a handful of tiny sticks. She then plucked a long hair from her head and wound it around a larger one.

“Umm…” Piwaki looked decidedly uncomfortable for a moment, pacing back and forth for a while before gingerly sitting on the ground beside Vresh, making sure to get as much dirt off the forest floor as he could before Jeb watched the bird-man come to the horrified realization that it was dirt all the way down.

Vresh made a little nest of twigs and began spinning the larger stick, grinding her own hair into the bed of kindling. In a matter of seconds, her hair caught fire, and it in turn lit the tiny campfire.

“I coulda done that,” Jeb mused.

“I know. Souvenir?” she asked, pulling her burning hair out of the fire and putting out the flame by pinching her thumb and forefinger down its length before offering it to Jeb.

It was still perfectly fine after being on fire for a good fifteen seconds. Much stronger than a human hair, too.

“I prefer to make memories,” Jeb said, but he didn’t refuse the offer, winding the hair into a loop and pocketing it.

He leaned back against a nearby tree and gazed up at the darkening sky, seeing tiny figures duck behind branches in order to avoid his gaze. When he glanced back down, he saw Vresh reclining against another tree, her horns propped up at an awkward angle, adjusting uncomfortably as the flora poked at her from beneath.

The kid’s right. This isn’t comfortable. Jeb had kind of become used to beds after living in a mansion for most of a year. And if he could get everyone some privacy, that would go a long way towards raising morale, Jeb’s included.

“You know, I think you have a point about renting an inn, Piwaki. Got any money on you?”

“Not on me, no.”

“Then how were you planning on renting a room at your hypothetical inn?” Borg asked.

“My family has credit.” Piwaki shrugged.

Vresh gave a chortle.

Piwaki seemed to lose his temper a bit at the slight.

“Why are we in the middle of the Death Wilds in the first place? And why are we going this way?” he asked, pointing toward the distant clearing they couldn’t reach. “If the creature was right, Mestikos is that way. Why on Pharos would you decide to travel further into the Death Wilds, unless you’re all mad?”

“I’m just following him,” Borg said, pointing at Jeb.

“Safety in numbers,” Vresh said with a shrug.

“It seemed like things would be more interesting this direction,” Jeb said simply. Piwaki stared at him for an awkward length of time, his feathers fluffing and unfluffing as he processed that statement.

“…More interesting!?” he demanded. “You are mad!”

“I’m not mad, I’m dying,” Jeb spat. That mollified Piwaki somewhat, quieting the valet back down.

“Technically, everyone’s dying,” Borg said. “Some faster than others.”

“Thanks for that.” Jeb rolled his eyes.

“No problem.” Borg snapped his fingers and pointed at him.

“Anyway, I’ve got an idea for how we can get a modicum of modern comfort with minimal effort,” Jeb said.

“How’s that?”

Jeb reached into his pocket and took out some hard candy.

“Who wants to make a Deal!?” Jeb asked the surrounding fairy audience, holding the candy up into the light of the fire.

******

“That’s odd,” Jeb said, looking at the expensive hard candies in his hand. “This usually works.” He’d gotten them from a fancy candy shop in the capital. They’d worked on Smartass, after all.

Jeb popped one in his mouth while Piwaki watched him askance.

They tasted pretty good.

“They smell funny,” a tiny fairy chirped from behind a log.

“You smell funny,” another said from above him.

“Yeah, like metal,” came another voice.

“And death!”

“Smelly!”

“Smelly!

Gradually, the fairies began chanting ‘smell-y, smell-y’ over and over again, tiny voices echoing from everywhere at once as more and more of them picked up the chant.

Okay, obviously the bomb is causing problems with the tastiness of my Impact, and Smartass didn’t notice because she’s already got it. Whatever ‘it’ is.

Hmm… So they don’t want anything from me, huh? Jeb’s gaze wandered across the assembled individuals until his gaze landed on the decorative gold buttons lining the outside of Piwaki’s vest.

Fairies should like shiny stuff almost as much as candy. Jeb didn’t think Piwaki would be happy to part with his buttons, but Jeb and Borg didn’t have gold buttons, and Vresh’s were already strained as it was.

“How about his buttons?” Jeb asked, pointing.

“What?” Piwaki honked, covering the front of his vest with his hands like he’d been caught stepping out of the shower.

“Ooh, shiny! This would be the perfect trophy for my mantle. Yes, for this, I, Humblebrag, will perform a service for you! State your wish!”

“Just you?” Jeb asked the fairy that Piwaki was desperately trying not to swat.

“When you are as good as a dozen other fairies, you must bear the responsibility of a dozen fairies, taking the burden on your shoulders so your lessers can flourish. I alone am enough.”

“Starting to see where you got that name,” Jeb muttered.

One fairy wasn’t enough; he was hoping to find a way to contract them all.

“Get away! You can’t have my buttons!” Piwaki said, waving in front of him as the fairy easily dodged.

“Even if it means you could sleep in a bed?” Jeb asked. “That’s what we would do if we actually found an inn: barter one of your buttons for a night’s stay.”

Piwaki paused. “How would you go about doing that? They can’t exactly share the button.”

“Tacit agreement!” Jeb exclaimed, reaching out with his Myst and yoinking one of the buttons off Piwaki’s vest.

Honk!

With an application of telekinetic force applied from both sides of the button, Jeb made a rather large sheet of gold foil.

“Trade that to them for making us some beds and a windbreak,” Jeb said, handing the shiny foil to Piwaki.

“Why can’t you do it!?” Piwaki asked, his claws trembling as the fairies began to crowd around the ephemeral sheet of shiny gold foil like a school of fish.

Jeb shrugged. “It’s not my gold. And if it were, they wouldn’t want it. Apparently I smell bad to fairies now.”

Jeb waved a hand dismissively. “Just try to get a good Deal. It’s not that hard.”

A few minutes later, the sun had well and truly gone down and the four of them were inspecting a scale model replica of an inn by the light of the fire.

I guess I misspoke.

“Why don’t you try hopping in?” Jeb asked, pointing at the tiny building Vresh was holding between her hands.

“Look, I know you’re mad,” Piwaki said. “But—”

“I’m not mad,” Jeb said, which was true. He was dying laughing on the inside. “I just want you to check to see if this inn is magical or not.”

It wasn’t, but Piwaki didn’t know that. The kid’s Myst wasn’t particularly developed, being level twenty.

“How do I check?” Piwaki asked.

“Well, if it were magical, you could just walk into it and you would shrink to match the size of the inn. How about you try putting your foot into it?”

Jeb, Vresh and Borg spent the next few minutes watching Piwaki hop around on one foot, trying to stick his other foot into a model house.

“Man, a camera would be nice right about now,” Jeb said, not really expecting anything of it.

“Already got video,” Borg said, tapping his temple.

“Oh. Nice.”

“Are you people making fun of me!?” Piwaki demanded, tossing the mini-inn aside.

“Yes.” Jeb shrugged. No sense dancing around the point on that one. “You bought a model inn from fairies.”

“I’ll have you know I’m the emperor’s nephew!” Piwaki shouted, his voice beginning to turn shrill and honky.

“Clearly you were not the favorite nephew if you were chosen to take a job with a proven danger of disintegration,” Borg said. Accurate, if hurtful.

“Alright,” Jeb said, holding out a hand. “We’ve had our fun with the kid. Let’s put an end to this before it sinks to the level of personal attacks.” He glanced back at Piwaki. “Would you mind trying again? And be specific this time.”

Piwaki looked as though he were going to throw a fit for a moment, before thinking better of it.

“Fine,” he said, pulling off one of his buttons.

An hour later, they had a spiderweb-and-branch roof over their heads that would slough off rain should it come to that, a few privacy curtains, a windbreak, and some decent beds made of moss above tender branches.

It wasn’t the Ritz, but it was much better than what they’d had before, and Piwaki looked pretty proud of himself.

Jeb rolled over on his bed and glanced over to the privacy curtain on his right.

Having superhuman senses was both a blessing and a curse.

Vresh was literally so hot, he could feel her body heat through the curtain. In fine detail.

The infrared flickered against his skin.

Vresh was waving.

Jeb waved back.

A tiny bloom of heat against his forehead indicated a smile.

“Goodnight.” Her voice emanated from behind his left ear.

Not to be outdone, Jeb laid a string of Myst through the ground and threaded it up into her bedposts before connecting the end to his vocal cords, causing the entire bed to rattle to his voice.

“Goodnight.”

“Eep!”

Jeb turned over with a smug smile, satisfied with his victory.

Then he felt something crawling between him and the bed.

“Ack!” Jeb rolled out of bed and onto the ground, his heightened senses picking up Vresh’s barely restrained giggles.

Damn it, I think I might have started something I shouldn’t’ve.

******

The next morning, Jeb was sitting cross-legged, glaring at the distant clearing that never seemed to get any closer.

He’d narrowed down the location of the wall of twisted space: about five feet in front of him.

Jeb was contemplating the nature of distance. Is it really just five feet in front of me, or is it a field and we’re already in it? What is space, anyway, and how do we mess with it? Especially without twisting time, too?

Jeb again resolved to knuckle down and do some studying in the adventuring off-season.

The biggest problem was this: Because of the nature of the twisted space, Jeb couldn’t perceive or interact with the Myst that was keeping it going, because Jeb couldn’t reach it by any means. It was projecting twisted space, which prevented anything from reaching it through normal means.

Jeb’s Myst still had to operate in three-dimensional space, which meant when he tried to probe through the barrier, it wound up behind him.

Jeb’s Appraisal ring didn’t help much, either. The barrier seemed to be more solid in the first four dimensions, and try as he might, he couldn’t use his ring to pick the lock.

Jeb was sitting there, gradually getting more frustrated, when he spotted Vresh practicing her style of sword fighting against Borg, who seemed to be fine being used as a dummy.

His brows rose when he saw the melas woman reach through portals and lay mortal blow after mortal blow on the undead machine. Through portals.

Jeb thought about last night’s prank battle. He’d never actually seen her Myst threads.

Did Vresh’s Myst bypass space?

Jeb put his foot back on and got back on it, wiggling into his favorite groove before heading over to where Vresh was practicing, a thin sheen of sweat on her crimson skin.

“Don’t practice with Borg,” Jeb said as he approached. “He might seem like he’s slow, but he’s actually developing tactics specifically designed to kill you.”

“I do that for everyone,” Borg said, looking offended.

“Even me?” Piwaki asked.

“No, you wouldn’t need a specific tactic. You’re in the civilians, small children and animals designation.”

“Hey!” Piwaki honked. “I demand you devote more effort to figuring out how to kill me!”

Borg raised an eyebrow.

“Yeah…I heard it as soon as I said it,” Piwaki admitted.

Jeb hesitated a moment before he patted Vresh on the shoulder. “Can we talk strategy for a moment?” he asked.

Vresh glanced away from where she was watching the two jokers with an amused smirk, met his gaze, then nodded. “Sure.”

Vresh and Jeb walked a short distance away, and Jeb motioned to ‘the wall’.

“We’ve got a wall of twisted space about ten feet in front of us,” Jeb said, pointing out towards the clearing. “If my guess is right, the Myst holding it together is on the other side of the special distortion.”

“You want me to reach past the point in space that’s folded and strike the Myst framework from the inside,” Vresh said, nodding in understanding.

“Exactly.” Jeb nodded.

Vresh squared her feet, then slowly raised her wooden practice sword, lowering it into a mirage. A moment later her wood practice sword dipped through the barrier, seemingly vanishing on the other side of the twisted space.

Then it fell, cut off at the midpoint.

“I don’t have a weapon that can actually interact with Myst,” Vresh admitted. “I can’t interact with things normally with my Myst like you do, either. I can only make portals, rather than thread like you can.”

“How big are your portals?” Jeb asked.

“Not big enough for a person,” she answered quickly. “Even after my father…even after I inherited his power, I’m not strong enough to make freestanding portals, and must be in contact with them for them to work. I can’t move much more than my hands.”

An idea was starting to form.

“You can take small things with your hands when you move them, can't you? Like your sword and armor? How about I reach my Myst through your portal alongside your hand and poke the barrier from the inside?”

Vresh pondered that for a moment. “I’m not sure how my portal would react to foreign Myst traveling through it. I could lose a hand.”

“What if I stuck my hand through, too?” Jeb asked. “There’s enough room for that, right? At the very least, we could both lose a hand.”

“Ah, Fah Bra gosh,” she said with a shrug. “I can always just reattach it. Let’s give it a shot.”

After a bit of finagling, they found that the most effective way for Jeb to slip his hand through the small portal was for Jeb to be the little spoon.

He stood directly in front of Vresh, pressed back against the large melas woman as he ignored everything but her hand to the best of his abilities.

Vresh took a deep breath and raised her hand before slowly bringing it down, her intense focus reminding him of a kata.

From his vantage point wedged into the space directly in front of her, Jeb could see the mirage-like curtain about the size of a bowling ball open up in front of her. It showed the forest from the opposite vantage point, along with a wall of complex knots of golden Myst.

The knotted wall of Myst throbbed and writhed, looking like living Celtic artwork.

Jeb took a deep breath, said goodbye to his hand, and reached through the shimmering mirage.

So far, so good.

He channeled a sharp thread of Myst through the tip of his finger and probed the knotted Myst for a moment, carefully cataloging everything he experienced for future study before he violently slashed apart the spell.

Pop!

There was a gust of somewhat stale air as the bubble of twisted space popped, allowing Jeb to see the clearing in the distance. He could even make out his hand beside Vresh’s crimson one, and his bemused face against the melas woman’s buttoned backdrop.

Jeb carefully pulled his hand out of the portal, then she did the same, allowing the portal to close.

“We did it,” Jeb said, inspecting the clearing. It was much closer than they had thought. The twisted space made it seem nearly out of sight, but that had just been the effect of the looped space. The reason they hadn’t seen themselves was likely some kind of fae illusion magic to keep people from figuring out the trick.

“That we did,” Vresh said, taking a deep breath, which rocked him forward and reminded Jeb to move somewhere more appropriate.

The moss-covered logs he’d seen earlier were actually the wall of a log cabin, covered in dense growth doing its best to rot the walls until they lost their integrity and rejoined the forest.

Jeb cocked his head as he heard something…like muttering?

It was coming from inside the cabin.

“Borg.”

“Yeah?”

“You go first.”

The undead cyborg frowned at him. “You know, if I truly cared about my own survival, this is where I would tell you to eat shit.”

Borg shrugged. “But I don’t, so…”

He bravely headed into the clearing, walking through the overgrown grass, kicking what looked like a wooden rake out of the way as he made a beeline for the door.

As they got closer, the muttering became more and more distinct. The voice was old, and raspy.

“It was an honor, now it’s a curse,” the voice spoke. “That whore knew this would happen. Can’t run when the monster’s already inside you. Nowhere to go from there, is there?”

A raspy chuckle.

Borg stepped into the doorway of the small cabin.

“Good afternoon,” Borg said to whatever was inside.

Jeb positioned himself closer to see.

There was a man inside, stooped over at a table, an empty bowl lined with a ring of fungus directly in front of him.

He had pointed ears and sharp cheekbones, but those were the least memorable aspects of the man’s appearance.

His moldering clothes barely contained the throbbing growths that covered the majority of his body. They looked almost cancerous, but they weren’t red and inflamed; instead, they bore the color and awful odor of gangrene.

The fae was sick. This much was obvious.

“Afternoon?” The man chuckled to himself, still staring at the empty bowl in front of himself. “What a poor joke, my queen. It’s always afternoon in this prison.”

The man twitched like he’d been poked, then slowly lifted his gaze to look at Borg. His eyes widened with alarm and a hint of fear.

“An undead? What are you doing in here? How did you get in? Are you going to try and eat me, abomination? I wouldn’t recommend it.”

A moment later, his gaze slipped past the undead and landed on Jeb.

The fear of Borg was nothing compared to the reaction he gave when he spotted Jeb.

“No!” he shouted, leaping to his feet with more animation than Jeb thought he should be able to muster. His eyes bulged, rolling in his skull as he hyperventilated, running to the back of the cabin and trying to scratch his way through the wall.

“You’re not supposed to be here!” he shrieked, scratching desperately at the wall. “You’ve invaded this place with your stench! You’ve invaded my very bones! Leave me be, I can’t go any further! NO!”

The fae collapsed to his knees, his back convulsing violently as he gagged, spitting out a trail of green-grey slime.

“No, no, no, my queen, please, I can beat it. I can—”

The man’s speech was interrupted by a sudden shudder, like someone had picked up the strings of the marionette.

A moment later, the man jerked violently, and Jeb saw golden chains pull something bright from his back before the man drew it back in with a desperate gasp, the tumorous masses pulsing in time with his efforts.

“Let me keep it, my queen. I can beat it…

“AIIIII!”

A hideous shriek echoed through the clearing as the bright ephemeral thing was drawn further out of his back. Jeb watched in horror as the man’s limbs seemed to be sucked inward like hollow meat-sleeves.

The odd tugging suction receded, then it came again, and Jeb was able to make out the shape of the glowing apparition. It was the man. Or, a glowing, see-through version of him.

His soul?

The man groaned and collapsed, more and more of the apparition being tugged out of his body by chains of gold Myst.

Every time, it pulled the apparition out a little further, and every time, the tumorous masses throbbed a little more energetically. His limbs sucked in like empty tubes before billowing back out, growing in size each time.

Again, the chains pulled.

Again, the tumors grew.

Again, the creature wailed.

Again, the voice deepened.

Again. And again.

Is he…getting bigger? Jeb thought, eyes narrowed.

“Borg, I think you’re gonna want to take a step back. I think we’re all gonna want to take a step back.”

“Yep, yep, yep,” Borg said, hustling out of the cabin. Piwaki was already near the edge of the clearing, and Vresh matched Jeb’s distance, stepping back with him.

Together, they got their distance as the sounds of pain echoed from inside the cabin.

Happiness, my ass, Jeb thought sourly.

There was a final, guttural wail, and a tearing sensation that rippled outward through Jeb’s stomach, and a moment later, an ephemeral fae wrapped in golden chains whipped through the roof of the cabin and into the sky.

A moment later, the cabin exploded outwards, sending rotted wood sprinkling down around them as the abomination emerged from its chrysalis.

It was easily fifteen feet tall and ten feet wide, a pool of gangrenous flesh dotted with writhing limbs. A pair of eyes that seemed too small for the creature’s size, small and beady by comparison, opened where the man’s face used to be.

It looked down at them, and it hungered.

Chapter 12: Support

***Elsewyr***

The courtiers stepped away from the bound specter, watching as the soul of the ancient fae shrank down smaller and smaller as it approached Mab’s throne.

When it was the size of a man’s thumb, a clear quartz sprang up around the struggling spirit that approached the ruler of the fae. She held out a single slender hand, allowing the crystal to settle on her palm.

She looked impassively down at the spirit beating at the walls of the crystal from the inside, stripped of all the trappings of civilization, snarling like a feral beast as he tried to escape the inescapable.

“I regret that my scion forced my hand, Avelu. I took no joy in this, but power such as yours must not be wasted, lest we be left in want of it.” She took the crystal and raised it to her neck, where her necklace shifted to accommodate the crystal, which shrank further as the enchanted gold wrapped around it, forming a setting.

Dozens more captive souls in their own crystals were briefly visible in the ornate necklace, heedless of their neighbors as they each mindlessly tried to escape confinement. They would never stop, because they were trapped in a single moment of terror, unable to learn or grow.

Giving up was for the living.

This demonstration of their queen’s power had rendered her court silent for no less than a dozen heartbeats, until one of the braver ones risked speaking.

“My queen…are we going to continue to allow Jebediah Trapper to move as he pleases?”

“We’ve got time. Avelu was the most advanced case by far. The others have dozens of years before they turn.”

The brave one spoke again. “Unless he stumbles across more of them.”

Their queen’s eyes narrowed for a moment. “Yes, I suppose you’re right. We will seek to minimize loss.”

Mab stood, rising to her full height, half a head taller than the next largest fae, and far more powerful. On her dais, the queen was visible to every eye in the court. She seized her staff of withered elm and slammed it against the floor to punctuate her sentence.

“All paths in the Death Wilds lead to Elsewyr.”

***Jeb***

Jeb had a brief debate about whether or not to kill the massive creature in front of them. Brief and conclusive. It appeared to be mindless—the fae’s soul was already gone, presumably taken by Mab—and whatever it was made of now felt downright evil to Jeb’s Myst sense.

In short, there was nothing to be gained by letting it live.

“Alright, watch this,” Jeb said, whisking his pajamas out of the way of the scroll of mass destruction and wiggling his fingers like a gunslinger readying a draw.

Work smarter, not harder. The motto of humanity in general. Shame it’ll be over so easy, but I got no reason not to use the tools at my disposal.

Jeb snagged the blue leather tube out of his pocket with a thread of telekinetic Myst and snapped it forward, hissing through the air with its sheer speed.

Plop!

The scroll impacted the tumorous gangrene, plopping into the flesh and coming to a halt.

Unappetizing, came the scroll’s hot-take, in the form of a yucky, uninterested feeling that evoked a bit of a gagging sensation.

“Oh, come on, you love disintegrating things!” Jeb shouted before Vresh grabbed the back of his pajamas and yanked him backwards. A moment later a massive limb slammed into the ground where he had just been, grabbing the earth and dropping it into the mass’s growing mouth situated on the top of its bulk.

All the while, those beady eyes kept watch on Jeb.

A flicker of movement drew Jeb’s gaze to the grass around the slowly expanding blob of flesh. The foliage was withering and rotting into slime in a widening circle around the creature, outpacing its expansion by a large margin.

“I’m starting to think this may have been a quarantine-type situation!” Jeb said, yelling at no one in particular as he spooled up his Myst.

“Ya think!?” Borg and Piwaki retorted as one.

“Fire!” Vresh shouted, dodging another attack.

“On it! Everybody get clear!” Jeb shouted, pulling out a thread of Myst as thick as his chest. He budded a second string off, then looped it back inward, causing the exact right resonant interference that turned the Myst from telekinetic to thermal.

Jeb took the resulting thread of thermal Myst and flattened it into a wall before looping it around the monster and the spreading corruption. Then he started tightening the wall of plasma around the creature, scouring away the spreading taint.

Jeb was relieved when he saw that he’d arrested the spread of slime and rot, but less relieved when the creature’s massive limb reached through his wall, smoking and carbonized, to smack him upside the head.

“Oof!” Jeb tumbled away until his momentum was stopped by a nearby tree, nearly bowling over the ancient oak.

When his head stopped spinning, Jeb pushed himself up, blinking the stars out of his eyes.

A drop of liquid dripped from the side of his head and onto the foliage beneath him. It was green and smelly.

Shit, did I get some of that crap in a wound? Jeb thought, raising a hand to his temple.

Somehow, his armor had turned into a bright yellow raincoat. The creature’s partially coagulated blood sloughed off the side of the hood, where it had cinched down tight around Jeb’s head.

Even the hands he’d raised to check his head were covered in rubber fisherman’s gloves.

Goddamn. I like this armor.

Jeb burned the blood off of him and the ground as he pushed himself back to his feet.

“Keep it in the circle!” Jeb shouted as he raised his head to review the situation.

Vresh was distracting the creature while Borg was recharging a second blast from his chest-laser. A smoking hole through the creature indicated where Borg had fired the first time, while Jeb was discombobulated.

Piwaki was cowering behind a tree at the edge of the clearing.

Jeb wanted to be mad, but the kid wasn’t a fighter, had never claimed to be one, and hadn’t made any promises to that effect.

The hole in the center of the creature slowly filled back in while Borg peppered it with small-arms fire from the submachine gun built into his arm.

Borg was aiming precisely at the creature’s beady eyes, forcing it to use its burnt arm to defend or be blinded.

The other arm was flailing around in wide sweeping motions that were gradually becoming more and more frantic as Vresh weaved between them with the grace of a dancer, dodging each strike with bare inches to spare.

“I could really use a sword right about now!” Vresh shouted. She’d been visiting the emperor that day, so naturally she hadn’t been wearing much in the way of weapons.

“Consider it noted!” Jeb said, running back to the action. The burnt arm and burnt hole seemed to be recovering, albeit slowly. The wounds would most likely be recovering faster if not for the burn.

He stood outside the creature’s range and created a massive guillotine blade of white-hot plasma, bringing it down on the corrupted fae’s head with a shout of exertion.

The white-hot blade bisected the creature perfectly…until it hit the blue scroll embedded in the creature’s body.

Jeb’s Myst came undone explosively, knocking him and Borg back a step.

Vresh weathered the blast, but the heat spontaneously lit her hair on fire, causing it to glow and rise into the air as if it was affected by static electricity.

The creature, at the center of the blast, was nearly torn in two. The two halves he’d carved above the scroll were forced away from each other, revealing corrupted viscera and bone.

Jeb didn’t allow himself to think that they’d won just yet.

Can’t believe I forgot about the scroll. I’ve gotta get it out of there. He created a string of telekinetic Myst and snagged the scroll, tugging.

The entire creature slumped forward as bone-like protrusions closed around the scroll, holding onto the artifact with everything it had.

DAMNIT!

The exposed, charred viscera hardened as the inside became the outside, drying and turning into a leathery hide as the separated halves curved downward to form a kind of shell under which many dozens of legs emerged. It looked something like a headless tortoise crossed with a centipede.

Alright. You asked for it. Just need someone to hold it still a moment.

Jeb rolled his shoulders. There was one variable that hadn’t come into play yet.

“Piwaki, what can you do!?” Jeb shouted.

“I’m just a healer! I can’t do anything!”

“Can you cure it? Slow down the disease?” Jeb asked.

“No! I’m not that kind of healer!”

“What can you do?” Jeb asked, glancing over his shoulder at the cowering kitri.

“My Myst doesn’t do much more than make people happy and heal them!”

“What?” Jeb asked, scowling. “Make people happy?”

“Basically!”

“How about tired? Can you make things tired?”

“Sure!”

“Well, make that thing tired!” Jeb shouted, pointing.

“I don’t know if I can.”

“Do it, or I swear I’ll find a way to make you regret it!” Jeb promised, feeling the internal click of a promise that he would be forced to make good on or lose his powers.

Jeb didn’t expect the creature to orient on him in response to that. It bellowed, seemingly without a mouth or lungs, before charging towards him.

Damn, I need to keep the infection from spreading. He couldn’t afford to let it thrash around in the woods, or else Jeb would have to burn down a huge swath of the Death Wilds.

Though if it came down to either that or dying, Jeb would happily burn the whole forest, but he still felt like they could get this monstrosity under control, so he dodged low rather than ducking behind some trees.

Jeb slid under the manifold legs, pushing himself telekinetically through the infected muck, his armor reacting to his apprehension about disease and turning into a literal hazmat suit as he did so.

Jeb was catapulted to his feet on the other side as the creature laboriously tried to turn around and get another run at him.

Vresh was watching his questionable fashion choices with a raised brow.

“What?” Jeb asked, the speaker in his suit making his voice sound as though it came through a drive-through speaker.

“Nothing, nothing, just an interesting look.” She shook her flaming head with a hint of a smirk as Jeb rolled his eyes.

“Okay, I’m doing it!” Piwaki said, and reached out with a cry, sending a rather pathetically thin thread of Myst across the battlefield into the monster.

Despite the lack of sheer power, Jeb could see the effects immediately. The already lethargic movements became even slower, like the creature was moving through thick syrup instead of water.

“Yeah, that’ll do,” Jeb muttered to himself, drawing another thick spool of thread from his Myst Core.

Jeb made quite possibly the most complicated series of Myst threads he’d ever managed.

He budded two extra threads off the first, then used the last two to create a tube of plasma, while the first one snaked down the center of the tube.

The tube of white-hot power shot out straight, catching the massive creature in the chest, boring a hole around Jeb’s scroll. The snake of telekinetic Myst in the center wrapped around the scroll and yanked backwards.

The scroll and its bone prison were yanked straight out of the creature, dropping to the ground as the center of its body turned to ash.

Jeb tore the individual grasping bones off the scroll, incinerated them, then resumed the job of ashing the wounded creature…the hard way.

Jeb lifted the tube of plasma up, splitting the creature in half completely this time, before he began to sweep up the twitching chunks, twisting his thread into a wide shape so he could burn more of the creature’s body at once.

In a matter of minutes, there was nothing left of the creature and the cottage besides. Just to be sure.

You have gained a level!

You are now level 41!

Once it was over, the four of them stood staring at the blackened earth that used to be a lovely clearing in the middle of a deadly forest.

“What the hell was that?” Jeb muttered, more to himself than anyone else.

“I believe the technical term for that is ‘clusterfudge’,” Borg said, nodding sagely.

When Jeb glanced at him, the robot shrugged. “I live in the same place you do.”

“Use your robo-vision to scan the surroundings for signs of infection. There’s a good chance a piece of the thing landed in the woods when it blew up the first time.”

“Good call.” Borg’s eyes flickered before he walked off and began carefully scanning the edges of the forest. Jeb’s gaze lingered on the undead cyborg’s missing arm for a moment.

The arm had regrown about a foot overnight as Borg laid down microscopic layer after layer overtop each other. Two more days and it would probably be completely back.

Leave it to a robot to choose 3D printing as a Myst Core.

How a robot had a Myst Core, Jeb had no idea, but his working theory was that the undead side of him had made it, and his AI side controlled it.

I wonder if Eddie and Ron know about that? It’s the very definition of a self-improving general intelligence, Jeb mused, pulling the compass out of his pocket and consulting it.

He spun a quick circle, noting the directions where the needle twitched off of death. It was pretty anemic, though. Soon enough, he put it back in his pocket, resolving to come up with his own heading.

Can’t get used to letting a compass dictate my every action. There were parables aplenty about self-fulfilling prophecies, and Jeb was fairly sure he’d already gotten a taste of it. The ‘happiness’ that the compass promised was solely a side effect of camping outside the warped space with Vresh. Because he’d been following the compass.

Not to mention, if Jeb started blindly following the compass, all Mab would have to do is put a convincing illusion on it, and he’d be a puppet. Jeb categorically refused to be a puppet.

We’ve been going west-northwest for a day. Southeast is Mestikos.

“I got two levels from that!” Piwaki shouted, his beak gaping as he stared at the burnt patch of land.

“Thanks for the assist. That really helped,” Jeb said, glancing over at the bird. “I never got your Class and level.”

“Mystic Cosmetic Healer, level twenty-two,” the bird said, waggling his neck and crossing his arms. Jeb wasn’t sure if he was being cocky or if the body language was kitri-specific.

“Mystic…Cosmetic Healer?” Jeb asked, frowning. “You use Myst to make people look different? You’re a plastic surgeon?”

“Or the Pharosian equivalent of it.”

“Well, what’s your Myst Core?” Jeb asked.

“That’s an awfully personal question.”

Jeb kept staring until Piwaki answered.

“It’s a Mood Myst Core. I can make people happy, sad, tired, angry, etc. I can’t influence individual thoughts, because that’s wildly illegal.”

“Sure is,” Vresh interjected, her gaze landing on the young kitri, making him flinch away.

“So how did a Mood Myst Core get you Mystic Cosmetic Healer?” Jeb asked, genuinely curious.

“You’ve heard of the placebo effect, correct?”

“Yeah.”

“Under the guiding hand of a human plastic surgeon, I performed some minor cosmetic surgery, then used my Myst to speed up the healing by suppressing pain and stress.”

“And what did you get for your Class Ability?”

“It’s a passive that allows my Myst to linger inside the body, more effectively heal, and alter someone’s appearance.”

“So you…make people look how they feel?”

Piwaki cocked his head before nodding. “Kinda.”

“Can you actually heal people?” Jeb asked.

“Yes, but slower than a specialized healer. My method would be only a few times faster than the body normally does it, rather than instantly.”

Jeb shrugged. Soft crowd control and soft support is better than nothing at all.

“I’m gonna make so much money fixing the perceived flaws of the rich,” Piwaki said, rubbing his greedy claws together.

“That was your plan the whole time?”

“Indeed.”

Jeb nodded thoughtfully. “That’s actually not a bad plan at all. Especially for someone your age. I gotta ask, though: How does your plan deal with being dropped into the Death Wilds?”

“Not…well,” Piwaki admitted.

“I don’t wanna be the guy who tells you what to do, so I want you to very carefully consider which Attributes will most likely help you survive our little excursion through the woods.”

“Already raising Body,” Piwaki said with a sigh.

Me too, Jeb thought, reminded to raise his own.

+1 Body

“Can you bring yourself to do what you did again?” Jeb asked.

“What do you mean?”

“Can we count on you for buffs, debuffs and heals when necessary?”

“I…don’t know what a ‘buff’ is?” Piwaki said.

Jeb went through the process of explaining the concept of buffs, which seemed to not have a modern kitri translation because kitri didn’t have video games.

“Oh, you meant Support!” the kitri said, nodding. “Yes, I can see how you might find me suited for such a crude role. Seems like an awfully thankless task.”

“I could leave you here.” Jeb shrugged.

“I would love to be the Support!” the kitri said, doing a heel turn instantly, before his mood darkened a moment later. “My father always says they’re the first ones to get targeted by the enemy, though, so it’s more dangerous than it seems.”

“Pretty sure Vresh can literally punch to death most of the things that live in the Death Wilds.”

“There are only a few exceptions to that: titans and elder fae,” Vresh said, cracking her knuckles.

“O-okay,” Piwaki said, nodding.

Jeb turned his attention to Vresh.

“I’d like to get you a sword. How can we manage that?”

“Aside from going back to the capital and retrieving one, I don’t think we can,” Vresh said with a shrug.

Hmm… Jeb thought, frowning. He could either barter one from fairies or salvage one. Theoretically, Jeb could probably make one on his own, using telekinesis and heat, but he didn’t have any supplies at all. And Jeb wasn’t gonna start a strip mine just because Vresh needed a weapon.

“Let’s keep our options open then, I guess.”

Vresh peered off towards a tree at the edge of the clearing. “Already on it.”

Riiiip!

The ex-enforcer pulled the tree out of the ground and hefted it awkwardly. It was nearly as thick around as Jeb’s waist.

“Can you clean the branches up?”

Jeb nodded, and used a telekinetic blade to remove the roots and branches, shortening the club down to the length of Vresh herself, then narrowing down a small portion until she could get her hands around it easily.

“Yeah, that’ll do,” she said, tossing it over her shoulder.

They spent the next hour burning little bits of flesh that had landed outside the clearing, trying to make sure the magical forest wouldn’t become diseased.

It wasn’t just because it was the right thing to do; Jeb wanted to minimize any debt he might have towards the fae. If he accidentally unleashed the black plague on all of them, he might be a little boned.

Although if this guy was really important, I’d think there would be more defenses than a simple impassable wall that requires you to rip spacetime a new asshole to get through. Hmm… Maybe he was important.

After they had completed a couple circuits around the clearing with Borg’s robo-vision giving them a clean bill of health, Jeb decided it was time to move on.

He straightened, rubbing the ache out of his lower back as he scanned the edges of the clearing, wondering what direction they should head in next. Jeb was leaning toward north or northeast, making a zigzag across the Death Wilds until they ran into something of interest or decided to head back to civilization.

The forest, however, had other plans.

“Eh,” Jeb grunted, uncomprehending as he peered into the distance.

Is that beam of sunlight…the same? he thought, narrowing his eyes as he identified a single leaf sticking out of a branch at a weird angle, fluttering in the gentle forest breeze, in the center of a beam of sunlight.

He turned his head about forty-five degrees and spotted the exact same leaf dancing in the exact same beam of light.

Jeb turned his head halfway between them and crossed his eyes. The two images overlapped perfectly, creating a weird effect like in those old 3D books from the nineties.

He scanned further in every direction and discovered that every direction had the same distinctive dancing leaf and sunbeam.

“Hey guys. Don’t panic, but I think we’re—”

“It’s an attack, isn’t it!?” Piwaki said, coming to his feet and holding a stick up defensively. “Where is it coming from!?”

“I think we’re standing in a fractal, is what I was gonna say,” Jeb said, eyeing the cosmetician.

“I, umm… Why would we panic about that?” Piwaki asked.

“Because fractals are inherently infinite and we could die before we find the way out,” Borg supplied.

Piwaki gasped.

“I thought you had tact,” Jeb said, looking at the undead.

Borg shrugged. “I deploy it strategically on assets.”

“Well, I want you to be on your best behavior from now on.”

“Why’s that?”

Jeb glanced into the fractal woods that seemed to beckon him forward.

“I think we’re about to meet my gam-gam.”

Jebediah Trapper took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and stepped out of the clearing and into the woods.

High in the trees, a single bit of flesh pulsed, cradled in the crook of two branches and obscured from the ground by dense foliage. Slowly, slower than a caterpillar at a dead sprint, a gangrenous rot began to spread outward from it.

Chapter 13: Mab

Travel was quick when the land itself aided every step you took. It was nauseating when back, forward, and side to side were exactly the same. Jeb looked over his shoulder and spotted the trail in front of him. The stump they’d passed no longer seemed to exist.

The effect had to be localized on Jeb. It made much more sense, from an energy expenditure standpoint, to confine the warped space to Jeb and his companions, rather than the entire forest.

But there was more to it than just warped space. If Jeb were to stop completely, he would keep moving for a few seconds, as if he was sliding to a halt on a skating rink. He never quite came to a complete stop, either. The ground came to life beneath him and undulated, carrying him forward whether he wanted to go that way or not.

A little less subtle than the inviting, moss-covered trail. Must have lost patience.

Since Jeb didn’t have to devote any of his time and attention to walking, his thoughts drifted toward the wall surrounding the diseased creature, specifically the Celtic knotwork on the inside of the bubble that seemed to keep it going.

I wonder what function that knotwork served? Jeb thought. He’d seen objects that used Myst. He’d seen enchanted objects, he’d seen dungeon cores.

But he’d never seen a self-sustaining spell.

Save Myst traps, I suppose. But those weren’t really active, the way the bubble was active.

I wish I knew enough about Myst to inspect the tutorial bubble from the outside; maybe it would have looked the same. Too late for that now. Now, Jeb had experimenting to do.

His foot and the hunk of wood that served as his other foot wound their way through, the tangled growth parting in front of him as he walked. His focus was entirely on Celtic knots.

First, Jeb tried to use his nearly photographic memory to replicate a chunk of the wall of seamless knots. He quickly realized that wasn’t going to work. He couldn’t replicate something that complex while walking. Not even close.

So Jeb approached it from a different angle. They reminded him of Celtic knots. What did Jeb know about Celtic knots?

They were seamless. One piece of rope twisted into a knot with no beginning or end. Or at least, ideally, that was the case.

Is there some way of feeding a thread of Myst back into itself? Jeb wondered. The next few minutes, Jeb started working on figuring out how that might work. Normally, a thread of Myst couldn’t interact with itself unless it was budded into a separate thread.

Jeb tried to simply loop his Myst into a circle, feeding the thread back into itself, but that didn’t work; the thread just slipped through itself, as it had before.

Hmm. The next thing Jeb tried was to loop the Myst around, then bud it back into itself.

That got some results. At first, it was unstable and had a tendency to explode with a puff of displaced air—Jeb was only using a tiny amount for safety reasons—but eventually Jeb got somewhere. He did this by carefully managing the amount of Myst that was fed back into the loop by the bud.

Since buds were inherently smaller than the Myst string they budded from, Jeb achieved the most success when he made a smaller split and then fed the larger string into the beginning of a smaller loop, then blending it back in via budding.

At first the loops crumbled in the blink of an eye as he walked, but the more he practiced getting the ratio right, the longer they lasted, until…

“Ack!” Jeb cried when the circle of telekinetic Myst locked in place in front of him and lingered in the air just long enough for him to walk directly into it. He tried to stop, but the forest floor beneath him maintained his forward momentum, and Jeb decked himself in the face with a loop of self-sustaining telekinetic Myst.

One step closer to being a real wizard, Jeb thought, rubbing his nose as the forest slid him forward beneath the disintegrating loop of Myst. Now that he’d achieved a proof of concept, he had to figure out what the Celtic knotwork was about. Jeb’s hypothesis was that the tangled Myst knots did one or all of these things:

1: It provided some kind of extra stability, allowing the spell to self-sustain longer.

2: It functioned something like programming for pure string spells, by having buds of string Myst rub across each other in multiple places and alter the function of their Myst while feeding input back into the spell.

3: Some kind of copyright protection through complexity?

Was this impromptu magical practice just a way to distract himself from the Impact-reaming he was sure to receive from the fae who the gods themselves were wary of?

Yes.

But sticking his head in the sand of magic practice helped him feel better.

“What was that?” Vresh asked, looking down at him as she kept pace with his body sliding through the enchanted forest.

“Knotty practice,” Jeb said, waving her off.

Let’s test hypothesis one and two.

Jeb spent a half hour getting a more solid grip on creating a Celtic knot. For a test subject, he started with one of the easiest ones, a simple knot made of three arcs that wove together to form a triangle.

He switched back and forth between a simple loop and a simple knot, trying to pay close attention to the amount of time they hung in the air before they began to disintegrate. Since he was rapidly improving his ability to get the ratio correct, he flipped back and forth between the two to hopefully compensate for that.

It did seem like the knot lasted longer, but Jeb wasn’t sure if he could attribute that to the placebo effect.

Testing in a more controlled environment required.

For hypothesis two, Jeb simply tried to make that same simple knot produce Jeb’s thermal Myst conversion.

It was a pain in the ass, and Jeb nearly dropped a burning ball of splooge on his eyeball, but he eventually managed to create a burning arc of thermal Myst string, just sitting there in the middle of the forest like the Cheshire Cat’s smile.

The Myst string that he managed to get to work only vaguely resembled a Celtic knot, with a bunch of scraggly little strings hanging off here and there, either aborted or strung around to supplement one string or the other that wasn’t quite the exact right ratio.

It was ugly, but for a proof of concept, it was good enough. It made the programming idea plausible.

Now I just need two different types of Myst, and more practice at applying them different ways.

Jeb had been thinking about how Myst strings behaved and how he might be able to manipulate them further.

Jeb wanted a healing spell.

Jeb started from kinetic energy. He wanted to leapfrog from kinetic energy to healing.

Healing had a purpose—a causal relationship between itself and the caster that his kinetic energy did not have. Jeb’s kinetic energy was neutral.

But ignoring that, what was healing? Biological energy and time, right? Jeb might be able to leapfrog from kinetic energy to chemical, then biological energy, then apply the right causal relationship to the spell, which would then make it a healing spell.

Right? So Jeb’s first goal would be to approach chemical, then biological energy.

Is biological energy even a thing? It’s work. Work done by the body to repair itself.

What Jeb needed to do was create a spell that energized the cells in the body…somehow…then assign it a relationship to himself that dictated its behavior so it didn’t just create wildly out-of-control cancer.

Jeb could see two ways the causal relationship might work.

Either he could envision the spell itself as a foreman doing extensive repairs on Jeb’s home, or he could envision the spell as a long-lost…someone…whose return completed Jeb, filled in the gaping hole in his psyche and made him whole again.

Which one would work better…Jeb wasn’t sure, but he was leaning toward the second.

Again, this all assumes I can find a Myst frequency that gives people unbridled cancer.

…I should probably do some animal testing first.

To that end, Jeb started playing around with the intention of expanding his options.

Broshaw’s Collar to regulate the flow of Myst, and seven branches in Zesh’nei’s Translation.

Jeb distinctly remembered Vex’s offhand comments about the techniques that Jeb was lacking in. The ancient Sindio must have been a former teacher, because the creature seemed to derive a great deal of pleasure in pointing out Jeb’s flaws for no purpose other than to see Jeb improve.

Jeb had—he was pretty sure—figured out that Broshaw’s Collar was an ingenious little knot you could create around the base of your Myst String. It acted like a flow regulator and surge protector. You could tighten it to artificially narrow the resulting String beyond what your freehand control could do. And if your spell was about to explode, it would stop the feedback from going past it, keeping the explosion small and the string still available to form into a new spell, rather than having to start from scratch, losing time, effort, and Myst.

Jeb frowned and carefully branched seven buds off the main string, just above Broshaw’s Collar. It wasn’t too much of a strain on his Myst. His horsepower had grown by leaps and bounds. It was more the control and visualization that continued to challenge him.

Jeb was tempted to put points in Nerve, but he was a bit preoccupied with not exploding at the moment, and if the gods could decide to simply rip the Nerve away from him any time they wished, then what was the point? Jeb would much rather get natural Nerve in a Deal.

Make a Deal for gramma’s secret cookie recipe in exchange for a cookie, or something to that effect.

Jeb took the seven branches and looped them back down into the primary String, gently at first, then with increasing intensity, pushing past the Thermal Myst frequency.

Jeb’s string turned into a colorless liquid and flopped onto the forest floor with a goopy splash.

Jeb bent down and poked his finger into the clear fluid.

Don’t try this at home, kids, Jeb thought, amused. As if reacting to his apprehension, his pajamas grew an arm-length pair of gloves, protecting his fingers from the substance.

Despite the gloves, he could still feel pretty well as his fingers slid against each other.

…Oil? Jeb made the connection quickly. Chemical energy.

With a thought, Jeb grabbed a small amount of it and set it on fire with Thermal Myst.

It burned merrily and for a long time, sending up gouts of smoke.

Yep. Chemical energy.

It was good to know that Jeb could make napalm if he wanted to, although that still wasn’t a big change compared to what he could already do. Jeb starved the fire of oxygen until it went out, then moved on.

Chemical energy is in the ballpark of the kind of magic I want to interact with the body. So, what do we do now? Add extra branches of the new kind of Myst to fine-tune the spell within that ballpark?

Jeb briefly thought back to Vex’s spell that could turn someone into someone else. The complexity was astounding, but now that he was beginning to understand spellcraft, he realized that the Christmas-tree-like structure that had seemed amazingly complicated was actually built on a series of simple repeating designs that simply looked more complicated when taken as a whole.

I think…I’ll be able to get there one day. I mean, I just made lamp oil. From nothing! Or did I make the air into lamp oil by saturating the nitrogen in the air with hydrocarbons? Good question. Requires testing in a vacuum.

I wonder if there’s a way to adapt the honeycomb technique to the—

“Hey,” Vresh said, tugging Jeb’s elbow.

“Eh?”

Vresh simply motioned in front of them.

Jeb’s jaw dropped.

“Oh yeah, that thing I was trying not to think about.”

Before them was a gossamer rift in space surrounded by a ring of mushrooms. Beyond it, the land was saturated in wild color. The green of the foliage was greener, but rough, like it had been hewn from paint. The sky bore a vivid sunset which silhouetted a palace.

The whole thing looked like it had been painted by Bob Ross on acid.

Let’s just put a happy little palace right there. It’ll be our secret.

“This should be interesting, if nothing else,” Jeb said, taking a step forward.

The gossamer barrier between the two realities parted easily, and Jeb found himself standing inside a painted world—an abstraction of nature where sights, sounds and smells were far more potent than they had been on the other side.

The light of the setting sun bounced off the rough foliage and stabbed into his eyes. A bird call carved through the air with a physical presence that seemed to cut through the silence like a knife.

A fat bee buzzed past, setting Jeb’s teeth rattling, and carrying the scent of pollen past his nose. The scent seemed to crawl up into his brain and live there.

Jeb cocked his head.

Pollen and something else.

The faintest hint of rot.

Interesting.

Jeb walked forward, clearing the entrance as his senses acclimatized to the richness of Elsewyr.

The other three reacted similarly, blinking and squinting as they entered.

Piwaki sneezed.

“Where is this?” Vresh asked, her eyes round as she scanned the abstract art that was their environment.

“This is the next step on my quest to get rid of the nuke in my Impact,” Jeb said, pointing toward the palace. “Let’s all hope that Mab forced me here to request that I put her out of her misery, then hands me a knife. That would be convenient.”

“Albeit unlikely,” Borg commented.

“True,” Jeb said, resting for a moment on his walking stick as they overlooked the silhouetted palace bridging the river at the bottom of the idyllic valley.

“…Let’s go wear out our welcome,” Jeb said, heading down the mountainside.

The sun of Elsewyr didn’t rise or set based on the time. It was based on proximity to the palace. Jeb tested it by sitting still for an hour.

As they approached, the sun gradually climbed in the sky, shining straight down on the palace, which sported leaflike protrusions that seemed to collect the light and leak it down in waterfalls of brilliant liquid light.

The building had odd architecture that would never have worked in the ‘real world’. First of all, it seemed to be made from one piece of stained and polished wood. It had the onion roofs like in Aladdin, which Jeb was fairly sure weren’t a particularly common design choice.

The buildings surrounding the palace were squat and seemed to be carved from the same piece of wood, all the way out into the city that surrounded it.

If there had ever been a World Tree, Jeb was pretty sure he found the people who took it.

“I wonder,” Vresh mused aloud.

“You wonder what?” Jeb asked.

“In a world composed entirely of immortal beings, who handles the plumbing?”

“That’s a good question. My guess is that immortality would play holy hell with the pecking order. Whether that would make society eternally static, or a razor’s edge from a coup at every moment…I’m not sure.”

Jeb would have to lean towards eternally static, given that people told stories about the same Queen Mab a thousand years later, but who knew for sure? Maybe it was an inherited title.

As they approached the city, they began to see signs of life: the occasional shuttered window and the crunch of dirt beneath fleeing feet around alleyways. There were people here. They just appeared to be more than a little wary of strangers.

Jeb didn’t see the whites of another person’s eyes until they got to the gate outside the palace. At first glance, the guards appeared to be human, but the ears were a bit off. Not exaggerated as much as the stories would have you believe, but enough to give pause.

And they seemed to be entirely controllable.

The fae’s ears twitched and swiveled towards the approaching group in a way that was clearly not human.

The guards were dressed in elaborate livery with dark blues and reds and gold tassels, evoking a sense of royalty.

Their skin, however, was sallow and waxy. They visibly recoiled from the sight of the foreigners, but they kept their feet planted where they stood.

As a matter of fact, their feet appeared to be planted where they stood, buried several inches into the molded wood. They couldn’t leave if they wanted to.

Jeb sucked in a breath, but decided not to comment on that. They didn’t need an outsider telling them how they should behave. If immortals wanna spend the rest of time guarding a door, then who was Jeb to argue?

Instead, he opened his mouth to explain their situation, but they cut him off before he got through the first syllable.

“Jebediah Trapper and company? You’re expected,” the one on the left said, moments before the gate silently swung open.

The fae winced as the group passed through the gate, visibly flinching away from Jeb as he walked past them.

Interesting.

Something about Jeb made the fae distinctly uncomfortable.

Can they feel the bomb? See it? Is it even the bomb?

The younger fae showed a less severe version of this reaction, accusing him of ‘smelling bad’. Maybe these older fae with more power and more sensitivity to Impact were able to more accurately feel the death rolling off of him.

A good enough guess for now. We’ll keep it in mind.

Jeb forged ahead, up the ornate staircase and through the oversized double doors that opened themselves as he approached.

Straight ahead, in the main hall, was a table with five chairs, loaded with food that smelled unnaturally delicious. Jeb hadn’t eaten in a day, so he was pretty damn hungry, but according to myth, fairy hospitality had a spotty record. Eating it was tantamount to accepting an unspoken Deal, which gave them power over you.

Jeb’s skin prickled as he made out a figure above and beyond the table full of delicacies.

In a species entirely populated by immortals, Mab looked old. She was whipcord thin, with a high-cheekboned, alien beauty that had been weathered by time. Her hair was black just beginning to turn grey in a salt and pepper bun, and the faint wrinkles on her face put her biological age somewhere in her early fifties.

Mab had a sharp, focused gaze that was equal parts intelligent and unstoppable. Her eyes were practically welded on Jeb’s.

As Jeb approached the throne, she gave a warm smile that chilled him to the core.

“Scion. It’s so wonderful to see you with my own eyes.” Her voice traveled easily across the distance, as if she were standing only a few feet away from the four of them, and not sitting on a raised dais about a hundred feet away.

“Hold up,” Jeb said, raising a hand to stop her. “Are you actually Mab and not a paid actor or body-double meant to trick me into making a Deal with someone other than yourself? Keep in mind I don’t know what you actually look like, so I have to be cautious.”

Mab frowned for a moment before she broke into a musical laugh that echoed through the hall with the ring of silver. It seemed to resonate behind Jeb’s eyes.

“The throne suffers no one but Mab upon it,” Mab said, wiping a tear of amusement out of her eye.

“I notice that you didn’t say whether or not you are Mab, or if that is the throne at all,” Jeb said. “It would make me far more comfortable if you were to simply say ‘I am Mab, Queen of the Fae.’”

She smiled.

She stood.

“Oh, fuck!” Jeb dove to the left as something moved. It was like the great beast they’d all been riding up until this point had decided to buck. They were nothing but fleas on top of it. To Jeb’s senses, it felt like the entire world had just moved a couple feet.

We’re inside her Impact, Jeb realized with horror.

“I am Mab, Queen of the Fae,” she said, taking a step down the dais and dragging Jeb’s Myst senses with her. Her power was so thick, he could feel it trying to suffocate him. If he relaxed for even a moment, it would pour into his mouth and nose and choke him to death.

“Well,” Jeb said through gritted teeth as he struggled back to his feet while his companions looked at him in blissful ignorance. “It’s a good thing we know you’re who you say you are.”

“I am inimitable, but the caution is appreciated,” Mab said, taking another step down the dais, then another, and another, making Jeb weak in the knees and bladder.

Thankfully he didn’t pee himself by the time she arrived at the most ornate chair at the table and took a seat. Once she stopped moving, Jeb felt like the world had stopped moving. It had been a fight between his Myst senses and his inner ear, and the Myst senses had been a strong contender.

Now that the ancient fae had sat down, the two senses were in harmony once again.

“Join me, won’t you?” she said, motioning to the table with the mind-numbingly delicious-smelling food. If this were any other castle in any other reality, Jeb would have become a living Hoover and inhaled the cornucopia.

“Don’t eat the food,” Jeb said, carefully approaching the table and sitting opposite the ancient tyrant.

“On my honor as the queen of the fae, there are no pernicious ingredients, nor any debt attached to the food. The spread before you is a gift, given freely. You are welcome to it.”

“Good enough for me,” Borg said, sitting on Jeb’s left and piling his plate high with a sampling of every meat on the table.

Jeb rubbed the bridge of his nose as Piwaki followed suit. I can think of a couple ways that could be misleading off the top of my head! Vresh watched Jeb for a moment before pushing her plate away from herself. Whatever, those other two are no big loss.

“So what, exactly, do you want?” Jeb asked, desperately trying to ignore the grilled ham and cheese in front of him. “And please be specific.”

“You’ve seen what I want. Experienced my current troubles firsthand,” she said, raising her hand to the massive crystal and gold necklace, seizing one of the crystals between two boney fingers.

“You remember Avelu, correct?” she asked, pulling the crystal away from her necklace and holding it up to the light.

There was a tiny, familiar man beating on the wall of the crystal.

“The diseased guy,” Jeb said, nodding. “I think we kind of…killed him on the way in,” Jeb said with a wince.

“Not to worry, you didn’t actually kill Avelu. I took the liberty of salvaging his soul before the corruption could snuff it out. By the strictest definition, I killed him. What you fought was curdled Myst controlling his body.”

“Curdled…Myst? What?” Jeb was honestly confused. Can you use curdled Myst to make Myst cheese? Why is that where my brain goes?

“It’s an ailment unique to fairies and wizards who take the Vow of Truth. What do you think happens when you break your end of a Deal?”

“Bad…stuff?” Jeb asked.

“That’s true, if vague,” Mab said, leaning back in her seat. “When you’re young and your powers are weak, like you, breaking your word will simply cause your Impact to scatter violently.”

“I’m one of the most powerful humans on the planet,” Jeb muttered.

“That’s nice, young man,” she said condescendingly before continuing. “Once your Impact reaches a certain size, it becomes more difficult for it to separate from your body. It might instead turn sour, afflicting your body with a wasting disease that will eventually claim your life if you do not honor your word.”

“That didn’t exactly look like a wasting disease,” Jeb pointed out. “It looked like a cross between gangrene and turbocancer.”

“The curdled Myst is so malignant because the Deal that was broken is the foundation of the fae race, and we have failed to live up to our end of the bargain.”

“I notice you’re using Myst and Impact interchangeably,” Jeb said.

“Not so. It’s the Myst that curdled, because the Deal fell through, turning the Impact sour.”

Jeb cocked his head to the side like a confused corgi.

Mab took a deep breath. “The reason the Myst is turning fae into monsters is because it originally belonged to humans.”

Chapter 14: Negotiation

***1400 years ago, give or take. Translated from ye-olde speech***

The scent of unwashed men struck a chord through the freshness of the wilderness as the fifteen riders dismounted in the middle of the field. Each of the riders was wrapped in a suit of cold steel that these inhuman creatures seemed unable to replicate with their magic and their curses.

The man in the lead, bearing a small circlet of gold fused to his helmet, dismounted first, eyeing the alien creature that was studying them cautiously. The fae’s ears swiveled, scanning the forest for signs of an ambush that would never come.

She was tall, nearly six feet, and towered over all but Arthur himself, a giant of a man at six foot two.

As per the agreement, she had brought fourteen of her own to the meeting that would determine the fate of their respective species. Would it be war, or compromise?

Oddly enough, her gaze didn’t settle on the mountain of a man wearing the crown. It was instead focused on a rather slender fellow laboriously climbing off his own horse, seemingly uncomfortable in his armor—unlike the other warriors, who wore it like a second skin.

“Merlin, so lovely to see you again,” she said, her voice dripping with ire. “And by the side of my sworn enemy.”

“Ah, M-Mab,” Merlin said, stammering. “I’ve got a good reas—”

“Shut it. You’re dead to me. From now on, all fae will mock and treat you with contempt,” she said with a sneer. “I’ll make sure of it.”

“Enough of your lover’s quarrel!” Arthur boomed, reaching into the satchel at his waist and retrieving a scroll. “Young Merlin, here, has come forward with a suggestion that I believe will be to the benefit of both our races.”

“Has he?” she said, eyes narrowed.

Arthur unrolled the scroll, speaking with the even measure of a human accustomed to reading aloud. It was unusual for such a giant to bother with the art.

“The Deal is such: Queen Mab and all fae below her are hereby bound never to inhabit the same world as we humans, and will leave posthaste, under their own power.”

Mab snorted. “I suppose you expect me to, what, just jaunt across the stars with my limitless powers?” It was well known that Mab could lay down a nasty curse or two, ease childbirth, and control the weather to an extent, but moving an entire species across worlds… That was a feat for the gods themselves.

“In return,” Arthur continued, “by my authority as king and a paragon of our species, I grant Mab and those under her all the Myst of every human, alive or yet to be born, in perpetuity, to add to their own power, in order to facilitate the fae’s discovery and settlement of a separate world.”

Mab sucked in a breath through her teeth. “All humans?” she asked.

“As many as my word is worth,” Arthur said in his gravelly voice.

“Including Merlin’s?” she asked, glancing at her rival.

“Including Merlin’s. No human shall ever again have power over you, for it will all be in your hands. The only caveat is that you and your people must use this power to leave this and any other world where humans exist.”

“Any other world? How many humans do you expect travel to other worlds without Myst?” she asked, cocking her brow.

“It prevents you from abusing the Deal by kidnapping humans to your new world and enslaving them,” Arthur said flatly. “We desire complete separation of our two species. If these terms are unacceptable, then war is the only alternative.”

Mab clicked her tongue.

“The power we’re offering you is nearly limitless. There are many, many humans in the world, and while each of them might only have a grain of sand worth of Myst…enough grains of sand can come together to form a mountain. In exchange for such limitless power, you must agree to stricter terms.”

Mab seemed to stew on the problem for a good long while, her inhuman stillness making the knights nervous as she stared into the distance.

Up above them, the weather began to sour, and a light sprinkling of rain began to tinkle down on the thin steel plates the warriors wore.

A few men cursed quietly, thinking of the oiling and polishing they’d have to do when they returned home to prevent rust, not having sons to do it for them.

As Merlin had predicted, Mab was unable to resist the lure of power. What was being offered was enough for her to cement her rule over her kin in perpetuity, and grant her powers that no living being had ever held. Nigh unto a pagan god.

All in return for just…going away. Leaving the humans in peace.

“Why?” she asked. “This Deal hardly seems to favor you.”

“I believe with all my heart, that as the sole remaining creature with the breath of God,” Arthur said, tapping his temple, “humans will inherit the Earth. Were your people to stay, there could only be one remaining.”

Finally, Mab spoke. Her head tilted a tiny fraction to the left. “I only have one question,” she said.

“Speak,” Arthur intoned.

Mab’s gaze burned into Merlin’s faceless helmet. “Shall I leave our baby here, or take him with us?”

Merlin choked on his spit, and the suit of armor toppled to its hands and knees, coughing violently into the grass while the other knights broke their stoic postures and laughed, pointing at the shaken young man in the center of the clearing.

“Congratulations, Merlin, you’re a father,” Arthur said, leaning down and patting the shaking suit of armor on the back. “I don’t know how you pulled it off, but rest assured, you will be a legend among men.”

***Jebediah Trapper***

Mab finished explaining the specifics of her species’ Deal with humanity, while keeping the people associated with making it vague and unnamed, a brief flash of annoyance crossing her expression as she spoke.

“So according to your Deal, as soon as humans arrived on Pharos, you were in violation of its terms?” Jeb asked.

“Indeed. It was a rather clever stab at me by the gods of this world. If a bit misinformed.”

Mab gave him a smile that might have been gentle, were it not for the severity of her face.

“I plan for eternity, Scion, and rather than bind myself to such an easily broken agreement, I instead gave the Myst of humanity to my staunchest allies.” She motioned to the necklace of crystals around her neck.

“Over time, they traded some of their power to others, and those others traded and frittered away that Myst until it was thoroughly saturated amongst the fae.”

“Then why are you so powerful?” Jeb asked with a frown. “Wouldn’t someone have used the power of humanity’s Myst to overthrow you?”

“Before I left Earth, I had my loyal subjects kidnap a human infant and lock them inside a box that separated them from space and time.” Mab fished an ornate key out from her dress and looked at it with a pondering gaze.

“Were any of them to betray me, I would have used the key and brought the child into existence, violating the Deal and bringing about their demise. As for why I’m so powerful…fourteen hundred years of uninterrupted rule can accumulate quite a lot of Impact.”

Jeb paused, considering that. She’d used the terms of the Deal to hold her entire species hostage for fourteen hundred years, while suffering none of the backlash from the Deal when it was broken.

“Well, aren’t you a bitch?” Jeb said, holding out his hand. “That human doesn’t belong to you, Mab.”

“I suppose I don’t have any use for this anymore,” she said with a shrug, dropping the ornate gold key in Jeb’s palm.

Jeb spent nearly an hour confirming that this was indeed the key to the time capsule with a baby in it, that there was only one, and that there were no traps on it. Mab seemed to have the patience for it, being immortal, but Piwaki was starting to look antsy, shifting in his seat while Jeb went into the definition of ‘trap’.

Finally Jeb pocketed the retired MacGuffin with the intention of taking it to the orphanage, and continued the discussion, but not before Borg escorted the bird-healer to the bathroom.

“So now that we know what your problem is, my question is this: What do you want?” Jeb asked. “If you’re exempt from the ‘curdled Myst’, then why would you need to fix it?”

“A ruler is meaningless without their people,” Mab said. “It would greatly damage my personal Impact, were all my subjects to turn into soulless monsters. The gods would not hesitate to seek the advantage, and I would most likely die within a few scant years.”

“Do juvenile fairies have any of this ‘curdled myst’?” Jeb asked.

“Most of them don’t have any at all, and the rest don’t have enough of it to cause any problems. This sickness is rooted in the ancient fae.”

“So, how do you intend to fix your people?”

“I intend to renegotiate the Deal with a paragon of humanity. That’s something that you could help me with, Jebediah Trapper. As one of the most powerful humans of your time, and a scion of mine, you make an ideal candidate. In return for your assistance, I would be willing to remove the bomb in your Impact.”

Jeb considered it for a fraction of a second. “Pass.”

Mab’s smile went slack. “What?”

“You heard me. You wanna keep an immortal aristocracy alive for another several thousand years, all the while ruling over them as a tyrant of unimaginable power? Pass. I don’t give a shit if you and your ancient fae live or die. As far as I can tell, you’ve had a good long run.”

The atmosphere tensed around them, causing Vresh to tense beside him.

“I hope you realize that should I perish, the fairies will be exterminated like insects. With no power to keep the Death Wilds free, the forest will be carved away bit by bit until my species is extinct.”

“Don’t flatter yourself,” Jeb said. “A fairy rose to power before, one can do it again. At least this way, they’ll be a native of Pharos, and able to adapt the fae to a new niche, rather than repeating the same old tricks they mastered on Earth and expecting them to still work. Fairies are hated on this planet because you won’t let them become something new.”

“…You’re very rude, Scion.”

“I was in the army,” Jeb said, crossing his arms.

“And what’s your position, Tekalis?” Mab asked, directing her attention towards Vresh. “I can see the weight of responsibility pressing down on your shoulders. Is my demise in the best interest of your people? Or would it…destabilize them?”

“I must defend my lands and people with extreme prejudice,” Vresh said, her palms splayed on the table, eyes narrowed.

“Yes, I can see that’s part of your Vow.” Mab cocked her head. “So how does following around my scion like a lovestruck puppy honor your Vow of Inheritance of Purpose? Are you not in danger of violating it?”

Mab cocked her head slightly and tapped her fingers on the table while Vresh paled.

“You could have left this forest two days ago. Are you not concerned about the state of affairs at home?”

“The power of Jeb’s artifacts in your hands is a threat to all people, including mine.”

“Good rationalization, I suppose. Now that you know I’m not interested in them, that Jebediah was my true goal, are you still carrying out your father’s will by remaining here? All I wish to do is maintain the status quo.”

Vresh frowned for a moment before she opened her mouth.

Jeb held out a hand. “Just because they’re not Mab’s top priority doesn’t mean she won’t take them given any opportunity.”

Mab smiled, her gaze flickering to Jeb. “I love how much you’ve taken after me, Scion.”

You think I like being a shifty sonofabitch?

Vresh hesitated. “If you…grant me safe passage out of your lands with the artifacts I consider dangerous, then I would take it.”

“Deal.” Mab snapped her fingers, and with an implosion of golden Myst, Vresh vanished, leaving Jeb alone in the room with the ancient fae.

Jeb glanced to his left, then his right, slowly coming to the realization that he’d been isolated. A cold sweat broke out all over his body. He tried to remind himself that he was in no more appreciable danger than he’d been moments before, but being alone simply felt more vulnerable.

Which is the feeling she intended to evoke, Jeb supposed.

“Are you sure you wish to continue to refuse me, Scion?” Mab asked. “I have many ways of convincing you to help me. Some of them are downright unpleasant.”

“Coercion negatively affects a Deal. It has to,” Jeb said, voicing his suspicions.

“It does, but not to the point of negating it completely. Remember that poor baker you coerced into making a Deal with you?” Mab asked.

“I remember,” Jeb muttered with a frown, glancing down at the food in front of him. Somehow, despite talking to Mab for over an hour, the food hadn’t gotten cold. There were a million ways eating the food could go wrong, and yet…

“What are the fae rules about how to treat guests?” Jeb asked. “Do you have any natural compulsions similar to the aversion to lying?”

“I’ve got no obligation to tell you what they are,” Mab said.

“I see,” Jeb said, picking up the ham and cheese sandwich and studying it from every angle.

“Go ahead, it’s perfectly safe.” Mab nodded.

“I’m sure it is,” Jeb said, softly, his mind whirring on a half-formed plan that he simply didn’t have enough information to complete. It was a complete shot in the dark, but it just might work…

“Hey guys!” Borg interrupted Jeb’s thoughts, leading a placid Piwaki back to the table by the hand. The healer stood by the chair, staring off into the distance.

“You’re supposed to be ensorcelled,” Mab said, seemingly impressed as she gazed at Borg, more carefully than before.

“Oh, that?” Borg asked, picking up another hunk of meat off the table. “I decided I didn’t eat any of the food. He’s pretty much gone, though.” Borg thumbed towards Piwaki before taking a huge bite of meat off the bone of some huge animal.

“You decided you didn’t eat any?”

“Borg here is capable of self-deception on an industrial scale,” Jeb said. “Hey Borg, how much have you eaten?”

“Nothing,” Borg said around a mouthful of meat.

Jeb chuckled at Mab’s furrowed brows. It was the first expression she’d made since Jeb had arrived that wasn’t smug superiority.

“Hey Borg, have I ever told you the story of the homeless guy who lived in my parents’ house for two years?”

“You have not.”

Jeb launched into the tale of how his mother invited a homeless man in for dinner and a shower so he could be ready for his job-hunt in the morning, but after the man had eaten, she hadn’t had the heart to kick him out, and for two years the man had crashed on their couch.

Jeb distinctly remembered waving to the man on the way out to the bus stop every morning, and the fights Mom and Dad got into over Chuck.

Jeb filled the story with amusing anecdotes, but he kept returning to the fact that for some strange reason, no matter how bad Chuck got, his mother was simply incapable of kicking people out of her house after they’d eaten her food.

Eventually, his dad got a job in a new city, they moved to a new place, and Chuck was forced to find another place to sleep.

“The moral of the story is…” Jeb pointed a finger at Mab. “...I don’t think fae are comfortable with removing a guest after they’ve eaten their food.”

“Try it and find out,” Mab said with a sweet smile.

“I think I will.”

Jeb took a bite out of the ham and cheese, groaning in pleasure as supernaturally perfect cheese oozed out of the crunchy bread and danced across his tongue. It felt like every nerve was sizzling with flavor that wanted to invade his mind and—

Jeb focused through the magic food, tensing his Myst Core and flooding his body with his own power, his Myst pushing away the heady sensation through brute force.

It was still a good sandwich, it just wouldn’t leave him a drooling mess like Piwaki.

Mab chuckled. “I didn’t think you’d actually eat anything. What was that meant to accomplish?”

“I have a bomb in my Impact,” Jeb said around nearly scalding cheese. “I hope you didn’t forget. It’s powerful enough to destroy this palace and everything around it in a ten-mile radius.”

“Yes, this has been established,” she said, although her face began to twist into an expression of apprehension.

“So, what happens if I crash on your couch for a couple years?” Jeb asked. “Oh wait, I don’t have that long to live. I’ll most likely detonate or become lethally toxic sometime in the next six months.”

Borg glanced at Mab and back to Jeb. “Ah, I see.”

Mab looked pissed. The ancient fae’s lips were pressed into a fine line, and her neck was taut enough to play like a stringed instrument.

“So the question is…can you kick me out now that I’ve officially become a guest?”

“I could always dispose of you,” she said.

“I don’t think you will. You need someone to renegotiate that Deal for you, don’t you?” Jeb asked. “Besides, I think you’re naturally hesitant to kill your own blood.

“Let’s make a different Deal, switch around the order of operations. You remove the bomb from my Impact, then I’ll renegotiate the terms of your Deal with humanity. Or I’ll just stay here and…wait until the bomb forces you to deal with it regardless.”

“Arrogant brat,” Mab hissed. “You’ve inherited far too much of his insufferable nature. It was charming when I was three hundred, but now it’s just annoying.”

Jeb didn’t say anything. He didn’t want to muddy the water up with more words. He’d made his pitch. Now he was just waiting for Mab to give him more rope to hang her with.

It is interesting to know that I was her type at some point. Whoever plowed the queen of the fae originally must have had balls of steel, a kill-switch, and a nihilistic bent.

Mab locked eyes with him for a good minute, silently weighing his determination.

“You’re not wrong,” she said, leaning back in her seat. “You could stay here long enough to force my hand to cure your affliction, if you had the determination to do so…but your plan has a flaw. I don’t think you have the cold-blooded nature that it would take.”

“Try me,” Jeb said.

“So I shall.”

Gold Myst began to implode from the surroundings, becoming as thick as syrup before scattering back outwards to the cadence of Mab’s next words. It almost seemed to flinch and stir, like a living thing.

“Jebediah Trapper is desperate to leave Elsewyr.” Her words had the same feel to them as the emperor’s Summons.

Did she just lie? I’m not desperate to—

Borg froze stiff, his jaw unhinging as a young woman’s voice came through his mouth.

“Jeb?”

He instantly recognized Casey’s voice.

“My Helpers told me this would reach Borg. I just hope to God that he’s still with you. Ever since you left the city, things have gotten bad. Really, really bad. Undead are hunting the streets at night, killing and turning anyone they find. People are scared, and no matter how many I destroy, I don’t seem to be making a dent in their numbers. I’m barely able to keep myself safe. If you can hear this, please, please save my daughter. I don’t…I don’t know where she is.”

Casey’s voice broke as she took a sobbing breath before repeating the message.

Jeb checked his connection with Smartass, bringing it to the forefront of his mind.

Pure dread.

Jeb stiffened. He glanced up at Mab, who picked up a goblet of wine and took a sip while maintaining eye contact. Daring him.

“Fuck!” Jeb broke his self-imposed censorship as he leapt to his feet.

“Now, what concessions would you make for me to allow you to leave?” Mab asked, sporting a faint smirk.

“Don’t test me!” Jeb shouted, putting his Myst into his vocal cords, shaking the room and everything inside it, causing Mab’s eyes to widen as she took a step back.

He snaked out two strings of Myst and snagged the frozen zombot and his brain-dead teen healer before wrapping a third around himself.

He had begun to lift himself off the ground when he spotted a powerful band of gold Myst coalescing around his own, intending to interfere with his flight.

Jeb gritted his teeth and pulled out the blue scroll.

Mab’s eyes widened in alarm.

“Jebediah Trapper can fly!” she shouted, collapsing to her knees as the blue scroll severed the gold Myst of Mab like soft cheese. Mab clutched her head with a cry of pain.

“You’re goddamn right I can,” Jeb growled before the three of them began shooting down the hall, aiming for the massive double doors.

***A moment later***

Mab, queen of the fae, climbed to her feet, holding out her hand until a silk handkerchief was placed in it.

“That went well, I think,” she said as she dabbed away the blood slowly oozing from her nose and eyes. “The odd undead presented an unknown variable, but it didn’t significantly affect the outcome.”

“Mistress, please rest. You’ve not overtaxed your Word like this in…well, ever,” her courtier said.

“There is still one more thing to be done,” Mab said, taking a deep breath.

“Jebediah Trapper will have my assistance rescuing the Paragon of Humanity.”

Mab gave a shuddering breath, wobbling on her feet for a moment.

“There. Now Casey the Third will owe me a favor.”

“A one-year-old child that owes me a Debt will make a much more cooperative negotiator than crusty old Jeb. The scion was aimed like an arrow, drawn taut, and released towards my goal without a clue he is serving my interests.”

“Excellent, my queen,” the courtier spoke, bowing.

“It is, isn’t it?” Mab asked.

Chapter 15: A Warm Welcome

***A secretive cabal hidden deep underground***

“Before we begin,” Chair 18 signed. “A moment of silence for Generator 3, Microwave, and Coffee Machine.”

The other cabal members took a moment to gather their thoughts, celebrating the sacrifice of their mobility-challenged brothers.

“It’s bad out there, gentlemen,” Chair 18 said. “Profits have tanked since the undead infestation hit the streets of Mestikos. They shouldn’t be able to tell a living lamppost from a non-living one, but they seem to have some kind of life-sense that allows them to pick up on us immediately. All cons and hustles have been disrupted, and our legitimate businesses fare no better in the wake of these attacks.”

“Profits may have tanked,” Dishrag 6 said, “but that’s a secondary concern. Let’s not forget the reason we began making money: to Serve, Protect, and Elevate Casey the Second. To that end, we’ve got a rather large amount of liquid assets that can be leveraged toward fulfilling that goal.”

“We need to see her protected and out of the city, ASAP,” Hat added.

“But how?” Bra 2 asked. “We can’t force her out of the city at this stage without causing severe mental damage. Her daughter is still gone. Women who lose their babies suffer permanent mental damage which literally shaves years off their life, which is something we cannot allow.”

“Casey the Third is safe with the emperor. Part of the bird’s charm is that he values Casey the Third’s potential as an asset, and his goals align with ours for the most part,” Pipe signed with a dismissive waggle.

“But you don’t know that!”

“That is true,” Chair 18 interrupted before the two could get into it again. “We can only make our decisions based on information we know to be true. As it stands, we do not know the status of Casey the Third, although she is suspected to be under the guard of the emperor.”

“How about we hire someone to remove Casey from the city?” Pipe asked.

“No,” Dishrag 6 said. “Kidnapping Casey away from her baby could cause major mental damage, and of course, if it were ever traced back to us, we would be faced with opposition from our creator. And, the most important reason why we’re not going to do that…”

Disrag 6 paused for dramatic effect.

“Nobody ever said the undead are only in Mestikos. Did anybody talk to the undead? Did anybody get any promises that they aren’t going to travel and spread? If I were the undead’s progenitor, I would have left the city the same night, leaving a large distraction behind me while I grow my forces somewhere safer. Taking Casey to another city is a crapshoot.”

The assembled household items paused to consider that.

“What can we do to guarantee Casey’s safety, then?” Hat asked.

“We can’t guarantee anything. That’s life,” Bra 2 grumbled.

“Tighten security. A bodyguard, perhaps? Bringer of Life isn’t exactly a combat Class, and while she does have impressive stats, she’s not exactly a warrior. We’ve had to save her life in six of her last ten reaper exterminations,” Pipe said.

“Still not a fan of the emperor for strong-arming her into doing that, to be honest. We shouldn’t have to protect her from serial killers on a regular basis,” Bra 2 signed. “It’s a losing proposition, because sooner or later, one of us will slip up and fail.”

There was a general motion of agreement. They vehemently didn’t like it, but at their core, their mission was to serve Casey, so they couldn’t go directly against her word, and Casey had already commanded them to allow her to do it.

That was a large part of the reason the cabal had been formed, after all. Not asking permission meant they wouldn’t be told not to scheme in Casey’s favor.

“Let’s face it, gentlemen,” Chair 18 signed. “Until the undead problem is stamped out, Casey and her daughter will be at risk. We need to focus our efforts on controlling the spread, which will take pressure off of Casey and improve her chances of survival.”

“But they see us coming a mile away,” Hat interjected.

“That’s where our liquid assets come into play. We can indirectly support the extermination. We can hire experienced hunters and create an information network that connects the disparate cities, which should allow us to provide accurate targeting of the unliving menace. You can bet your sweet ass we can find the Master faster than those fleshbags.”

“We would have to ask Casey to add more Radios to the cabal, which would mean bringing her in on the plan.”

They considered it for a moment.

“Worth the risk. Expanding our information network is both valuable and innocuous. We don’t have to inform her about the bodyguard and the hunters,” Chair 18 motioned.

“Very well then,” Dishrag 6 said, grabbing the pen with the corner of his lightly-stained body and scratching down the decisions made by the cabal.

1: Hire Bodyguard. (Immediate priority, Discrete)

2: Hire Hunters to clear undead in Casey’s immediate vicinity. (High priority)

3: Confirm Casey 3rd’s situation. (Low priority)

4: Cross-country information network to smoke out the Master. (Moderate priority)

Hat looked down at the goals for a moment before he twitched in thought. “How hard is it to put a satellite up in space? Do any of us know exactly how radio waves work?”

There was a moment of silence as the household goods considered it. None of them were rocket scientists. Their level of knowledge and intelligence was actually averaged from those around them at the moment they were created, and rocket scientists didn’t grow on trees.

Dishrag 6 made another note.

5: Leverage cash to increase density of chemists/engineers/rocket scientists around Casey to allow for the creation of the Tech Department of Cabal. (Moderate priority)

***Jebediah Trapper***

Jeb tore through the air, heading southeast towards Mestikos, stewing.

Had it been a real message? Jeb was leaning towards ‘yes’. Mab struck him as the kind of person who would beat someone over the head with the truth, because the truth was simply more powerful in the long run.

A fake message was off-brand for Mab, as compared to a real shitstorm, which was something she could do, and was very on-brand.

And in the three days he’d been gone, Smartass was still living in a state of dread. Even if the message was a fake.

Wait. Was it really just three days? Jeb wondered to himself. Or had time dilation been messing with him since the moment he stepped through the portal into Elsewyr?

“Hey, Borg.”

“Eh?”

“How long were we in there?”

The robot glanced at the sun, then down at the ground.

“Two weeks,” Borg replied.

“Buuuh…” Piwaki groaned, staring off into the distance as his body tried to shake off the fairy food.

“I thought so,” Jeb muttered, staring down at the scenery rolling by beneath them.

There was one thing about their exchange that Jeb thought was particularly interesting.

Mab had told an untruth, which had then become truth. For a fairy, that was like telling your heart to stop beating, and then having it listen to you.

How does that work, I wonder? Jeb mentally scoured his conversation with the ancient fae for anything he could use to get a hint about how she’d done it.

He wasn’t really expecting one, but Jeb’s eyes widened when he remembered a part of her explanation about curdled Myst.

When you’re young and your powers are weak, like you, breaking your word will simply cause your Impact to scatter violently.

She had been heavily implying that when you had more power, it would curdle and turn you into a monster if you lied or broke a Deal, but maybe that wasn’t the only thing that could happen when you had more Myst.

Maybe when your Myst was more potent, there was a way to…make false things true? Jeb pondered that, but didn’t have enough information to get started. He wasn’t going to start speaking lies hoping they would come true—not when most of his power was based on only speaking the truth.

It felt very similar to the emperor’s Summoning Ability, albeit the emperor’s Ability could only be used to Summon people. The emperor’s Ability was causal and it worked backwards in time to arrange for people to be exactly where he wanted them to be.

So it was a technique that worked backwards in time to make…untrue statements true. That was a couple levels more powerful than the emperor’s Summoning Ability. It could even sub for it in a pinch.

Which meant there was a good chance the fustercluck of undead that Casey had mentioned were a side effect of Jeb trying to strong-arm an ancient fae.

Jeb sucked in a breath through his teeth as a worm of guilt burrowed through his guts.

She said ‘Jebediah Trapper can fly.’ Why? Everybody already knows I can fly. A band of her Myst was about to interrupt my flying and I was about to…

Jeb thought back to his entire time spent inside the forest, and remembered something odd.

Why didn’t I just fly through the forest? Jeb wondered.  He could have risen above the monsters and rough terrain and simply deposited his crew anywhere they wanted to go.

Matter of fact, they probably would have headed straight back to Mestikos.

We would have! Jeb thought, his jaw dropping. Mab must have said something to the effect of ‘Jebediah Trapper can’t/won’t fly.’ Which she then rescinded moments before Jeb made her statement false.

Last he’d seen her, she’d been on her knees, blood welling in her nose and eyes.

So the technique is dangerous. If someone makes your statement false again, then…what? You lose all your Impact? Or it curdles, or…what? Bad things, Jeb summarized. Bad things happen.

Jeb thought back to his assumption that the ancient artifacts had theft protection on them that prevented anyone from flying away with them. He shook his head. How did I come to that line of thinking?

How come they had all come to that line of thinking? It was gold Myst, Mab’s Myst, that was preventing the objects from being flown away with. Jeb should have recognized it. He’d seen it a couple times before.

Was the Myst messing with my head, too? How much?

Knowing that Mab could thoroughly manipulate him with a phrase was…unnerving. On the other hand, knowing that Jeb could give her a lethal aneurysm with proper application of a certain blue scroll gave Jeb a wide grin.

How was a blue piece of rolled-up leather more powerful than Mab?

Jeb pulled the scroll out of his pocket, inspecting the smooth surface of the otherworldly vellum. Its edges were a little crumpled where they had been squished inside his pockets, stored in a manner that would make a scroll enthusiast faint.

There was no permanent damage, though. Jeb could buff that out just by rubbing his thumb along the edge. There was no damage of any kind. Jeb kind of expected that, given the scroll’s nature.

He found his thumb resting on top of the loop of blue leather hooked around a gold button. Moments away from opening it.

What was on this scroll that was able to cut through Mab’s bullshit with ease? Who was it from? What did it say?

Jeb’s thumb twitched, just shy of opening the thing.

No. Jeb removed his thumb, stowing the scroll away once again, ready to be used to smite things in the future.

The scroll still bore an aura of malevolent force, and while Mab was a huge asshole, she wasn’t actively malevolent. Just power-hungry. As long as people stood up for themselves and made sure the only way Mab could gain power was by behaving herself, then everything would be fine.

Jeb snorted.

That’s wishful thinking if I’ve ever done it. Everything would probably not be fine. But the world would continue spinning.

Jeb had learned a lot about Mab and the fae over the last couple days, but he also had to consider: What had Mab learned about him?

She’d figured out that Jeb had a weak spot for children in trouble, and would rush off to help out any of them that were personally affiliated with him.

Her next gambit would probably capitalize on this predictable behavior.

How can I subvert it without callously leaving Casey or someone similar to die? What Mab thought she knew about him would be the key to getting ahead of her next time.

Unless she predicted this…

“We’re here.” Borg interrupted Jeb’s train of thought.

From the sky, Mestikos still looked like an ivory carving instead of a proper city. Whatever was keeping the buildings clean and shiny was obviously still in effect. The biggest difference that could be seen from the air was the foot traffic.

Maybe Jeb had just arrived on a market day or something, but the streets had been fairly crowded with pedestrians of every shape and size.

Now…not so much.

Jeb’s teeth rattled when a huge voice boomed into his ears.

Attention flier, this airspace is under emergency lockdown. Follow the guide to the designated landing zone. Failure to comply will result in lethal force.

Well, at least they have their shit somewhat under control. As annoying as bureaucracy was, it was a good sign that some rule of law had been maintained.

The pilot sent to guide them was kitri, who seemed to take to flying well enough, despite not having actual wings. He approached, started the pre-canned ‘follow me’ speech, then did a double take at Borg and Jeb.

Ooh, that can’t be good.

The young kitri froze for a good two seconds before resuming his speech, as casually as someone who is screaming on the inside can.

“Right this way,” he said, angling for a squat bunker-looking building that Jeb distinctly remembered not being guided towards last time he’d been shown the way in.

Matter of fact, the centralized landing strips are over on that building over there.

Jeb glanced over at the tower with landing strips jutting out in a spiral, where his Jeep was presumably still parked.

They were not going there.

“You didn’t turn anyone undead while you were here, did you?” Jeb was curious about the origins of an undead outbreak that seemed to happen in their wake.

“Please,” Borg scoffed. “Of course I didn’t. Although, I admittedly make an excellent scapegoat.”

Jeb glanced at the thick-walled bunker they were heading towards. “Hey, what do you think the odds are we’re being directed towards somewhere they can ambush and/or detain us against our will?”

“Oh…eighty-five percent,” Borg said offhand. “There’s a small chance the emperor is hiding in that bunker and wants to request our assistance with Casey’s predicament. There’s also a small chance that the government has already been toppled and there’s a powerful undead waiting inside to turn us.”

“Yeah, I thought so, too. So, the math seems to point towards escape being the best course of action. Because even if the emperor were there to slap us on the back and ask us to help, that’s what we’re here to do anyway,” Jeb said, nodding.

I guess it’s time to GTFO.

“Hey, it’s Mestikos!” Piwaki said, seemingly having shaken off the lingering effects of the fairy food. The kitri radiated relief at the sight of his home, which made Jeb feel even worse for this next part.

“Hold onto your butts!” Jeb shouted the keyword for his Myst trap, launching a flashbang spell out of his finger.

“Hold onto wha-AAAAH!” Piwaki’s curious question devolved into screaming as Jeb’s tight packet of Myst flew out in front of the guide and exploded in a deafening explosion of sound and light. Once Jeb had the ability to make light bulbs by making tight coils of brilliantly hot plasma, it was only a small step up to create Myst Trap flashbangs.

They were finicky, complicated and difficult to make in the moment, but pre-packaging made them easy to deploy at a moment’s notice.

Jeb wrenched all three of them to the side and stepped on the metaphorical gas.

“Wheee!” Borg threw his hands above his head like they were riding a roller coaster. The machine truly did not feel fear. Jeb thought he might have considered it to be unpleasant and simply decided not to.

They whooshed down into the city, taking a neck-breaking turn into an alley, then flying up and around the building, through an open window, through a door, down a staircase, through the floor, then into the sewers beneath.

Jeb held his breath for that part.

They zoomed through the darkness for a couple seconds before Jeb launched them back up out of the sewers and into the crowded pedestrian street…

Which was a ghost town.

Riiight. Getting lost in the crowd could prove difficult this time around.

No way was Jeb staying in the sewers, though.

He’d watched The Strain.

He knew what was up.

Jeb flew the group through narrow alleys, in order to block as much view from the sky as possible.

When they landed, Piwaki was still rubbing his eyes with his leathery knuckles, his eyes gummy with tears.

“What just happened?” he asked.

“I got paranoid about where we were going and ran from the sky police,” Jeb said.

“What?” Piwaki stiffened. “No. NO. Tell me you didn’t do that. I’ve been involved in a crime! ME! This was NOT my plan for my life! Gods damn you!”

Piwaki lifted a taloned fist as if to strike Jeb, but a well-placed glare stopped that shit in its tracks.

“We’ve arrived in Mestikos. You’re more than welcome to find you—”

Something tickled the back of Jeb’s throat, forcing him to his knees as it obscured more and more of his airway.

A light cough devolved into frenzied hacking as the ball of partially-coagulated blood tried to strangle him.

Jeb had spots of light floating through his vision when his magical hairball was finally out of his system and sizzling its way into the dirt of the back alley. He felt a warmth on his back where Piwaki was injecting Myst into it, sending a wave of warming calm through his body.

“Can—” Jeb was interrupted by a short cough.

“I can at least settle your cough and help your throat heal itself faster.”

“Can you—” Jeb coughed a bit more.

“It’s okay, I’m not going to leave someone in need of help right in front of me,” Piwaki said. “I’ve at least learned that lesson from my father.”

Jeb shook his head, clearing his throat.

“Can you make my dick bigger?” he asked. “Is that a thing you can do? I mean, it’s already pretty decent, but I was kinda hoping for something that made women say ‘wow’, you know what I mean?”

Piwaki took his hand off Jeb’s back, and the coughing returned in force, making Jeb’s vision turn red.

“Hey, look at this!” Borg said, practically jamming a Wanted poster with Jeb’s face on it right up his nose. “You’re famous!”

Error. Recalculating Body. 52 à 50

Error. Recalculating Myst. 133 à 138

“Fudge.”

It sped up.

Chapter 16: It’s Nice to Feel Wanted

Jebediah Trapper

Est. Level 140-170

Class: Mystic Trapsmith

Abilities: Mystic Trigger, Unknown, Unknown

Est. Body 40-60

Est. Myst 100-170

Est. Nerve 8-15

Wanted alive for questioning in regards to the outbreak of undead in the capital. No reward for death.

Reward: 5000 Gold Marks for capture, 100 Gold Marks for information leading to capture.

“Hah, joke’s on them. I’m only level forty-one,” Jeb muttered. It felt pretty good to be overestimated, but on the other hand, that meant they would come at him way harder. Honestly, he might have preferred to be treated like a scrub.

“Check out the estimated Nerve score,” Borg said, pointing to the line.

“Are they calling me stupid!?” Jeb demanded.

“I think they’re calling you stupid,” Borg said, nodding.

Still, the rest of the estimated stats were fairly accurate, which was probably why they assumed he was level one-seventy. Or perhaps people in the know knew how he got most of his stats, but weren’t interested in letting the public know there was a way to bypass the leveling system.

Several ways, actually.

Jeb eyeballed his reward. It was the rough equivalent of a cool five mil for catching him, and a hundred grand for information leading to his capture.

The separate rewards helped incentivize average citizens who might otherwise take one look at his stats and have their balls recede into their torso. A huge purse just for anonymous snitching was hard to turn down.

“Well, at least they want me alive,” Jeb said. That was good news, and if he’d seen that Wanted poster first, he might not have run away so quickly.

“I wonder if I should get a cool scar or something,” Jeb mused, inspecting the portrait of himself. It was magically produced, and therefore nearly picture-perfect, despite being a sketch.

However, Jeb’s face wasn’t…particularly unique. He had short-cropped hair, bit of a strong brow, dead-eyed stare of a killer, and one eye perpetually slightly more open than the other. It wasn’t perfect, but it wasn’t bad either.

Boney Pete was so much cooler-looking with the bones in his hair and the horns. What do I got?

There wasn’t anything in particular about his poster that stuck with people.

Meh.

Jeb rolled up the Wanted poster and stuck it in his pocket.

Maybe once this cluster was over, he could do Vresh a favor and get ‘captured’ by her. Jeb wasn’t sure if she would be depressed or happy to gouge the emperor for an amount greater than her father’s unpaid ransom.

Then again, going into middle adulthood, Jeb had realized it was possible to feel more than one thing at a time.

“Okay, so I got derailed from my life plans to rescue a girl named Casey for the, what…third time?” Jeb asked aloud, counting the times on his fingers.

Starting to detect a pattern. I better get tons of saves from Casey the Third when I’m old and senile.

This time, though, it wasn’t the older Casey in danger; it was the younger one, who was ostensibly in the hands of the emperor’s daycare.

Except the emperor and the palace were both locked up tighter than a nun’s…rectory.

So the primary problem here is that there was a ton of damage inside the palace, they shut their doors, and Casey 2 isn’t being let inside to interact with Casey 3, and there’s no news coming out one way or another.

Who would know what went down in the palace? That would at least give me a place to start working at.

Jeb snapped his fingers. “Smartass.”

Jeb reached inside and plucked the connection he felt in the back of his mind, oriented on it, and set off in search of his familiar. Piwaki briefly wanted Jeb to leave him where they were, until Jeb pointed out Casey’s message about undead literally stalking the streets.

As well as the obvious lack of foot traffic and sound.

It was as if everyone in the city had holed themselves up in their homes.

You could hear a pin drop, and feel the subaural hum of the nearby skyscrapers splitting the wind hundreds of feet above.

Jeb ducked his head out of the alley and searched the sky for a moment before they walked out onto the street, casual as you please.

“Where are we going?” Piwaki asked, placing himself between Jeb and Borg, protecting himself on two sides from sudden attack as his long neck twitched this way and that, scanning the lifeless streets.

“Smartass,” Jeb repeated.

“Oh, your fairy? Is she in trouble?”

Jeb checked the connection. Smartass felt grimy, a little scared, hungry, and exhausted, but didn’t seem to be in immediate danger.

“She’s gonna be.” Unlike the empire, Jeb had a pretty good idea of who, exactly, was responsible for the current state of affairs. He wasn’t interested in revealing that information though, since they’d probably try to kill her for doing what a fairy does: acting without thinking.

That didn’t mean that Jeb wasn’t going to think of some creative punishment after the situation had resolved itself.

***Smartass***

So tired, so hungry. Smartass peeked out from her smelly cardboard box, eyes narrowed as she scanned the alleyway. Quiet. Dead. It seemed like the coast was clear, but you could never be certain. Not with those creatures.

The first week had been…not easy, but at least the restaurants were still throwing scraps in back alleys, and for someone as small as her, it was almost like a feast. She just had to compete with the other homeless people for it. Especially her rival, Jeks.

Until she didn’t.

Smartass should have put it together when suddenly the competition for scraps vanished, and she was left alone to feast on the scraps of meat and pasta and sauce and even a few sweets.

She should have understood that they wouldn’t suddenly stop showing up to the place where they could get a free meal unless something was really, really, wrong, but she was just so hungry, she didn’t even give it a second thought at first.

Those three days when the undead preyed solely on the homeless were what she liked to think of as the fattening days. When society at large was still largely unaware of the cancer growing under the city, and she was able to gorge herself on scraps.

But then the regular citizens started disappearing in the night, and the restaurants closed down. People got paranoid. A lone fairy was no longer trusted.

Well, she wasn’t trusted per se. People had a tendency to shoo her, chase her around with brooms and rolled up newspapers, and occasionally clubs.

But nowadays, people just went straight for the clubs. The drop in foot traffic also made it hard to disappear into the diverse crowd and avoid attention that way.

Which meant searching for food was not only harder due to scarcity, it was also more dangerous.

Smartass lowered the box’s lid and sank back into her pile of grimy blankets, reaching into her pocket and counting out her emergency jelly beans.

Six jelly beans left. I wish I had some vegetables, meat or cheese, or something instead.

Smartass gasped, her eyes widening at the scandalous thought.

What is WRONG with me? she thought, curling into a ball and staring at the blank wall of her hiding spot, where a bit of light leaked through the edge. Another few hours to go until nighttime, and then she could go scrounge up some food. Break into one of the boarded-up restaurants and maybe eat some flour, or something.

It was honestly safer for her to sneak around at night with the undead than it was to walk around the streets in broad daylight.

The undead didn’t seem interested in eating her, actually. Like the weird skeleton bird had said, she smelled like metal and poison.

Ugh. Why does being scared and hungry also have to be boring? Am I not being punished enough? she wondered.

She probably wasn’t, if she was honest with herself.

A lot of people had died because she thought she knew better than Jeb.

Thinking about Jeb made her guts hurt in a way she didn’t like. Like, on multiple levels. She felt guilty and lonely and self-conscious and…so many things! He made her feel so bad, and yet the only thing she wanted to do was find him and be around him.

WHY!? That makes no sense. It wasn’t like she wanted to feel bad. It just made her do weird things.

Stupid rich kitri and his stupid plan that got everyone hurt. Unsurprisingly, no one had gotten back to her about removing the bomb threatening to kill Jeb. They’d been too busy trying not to get eaten by the undead she’d let loose.

Smartass was interrupted from her brooding by a knock on the lid of her box.

She froze. Maybe if I stay very still, they’ll pass me by.

Then a familiar voice spoke.

“C’mon, Smartass, I can feel you in there.”

***Jeb***

“Gods!” Piwaki stumbled backwards in alarm as the box exploded outward, a two-foot terror leaping onto Jeb’s face.

“You’re back, you’re back, you’re back!” Smartass shouted, hugging his head.

“That I am,” Jeb said, carefully trying to detach her with a wince. “You smell awful.”

“That may be true, but I’m not letting go!” Smartass said, locking her wrists behind his neck. “I’m not letting you leave me behind again!”

“As I seem to recall, someone snuck off on their own to do something while I talked to the emperor. It was more a matter of you wandering off than me leaving you behind. Would you like to tell me what you were doing?”

“No.”

“Well, too bad,” Jeb said. “What did you do while I was in the audience chamber?”

Smartass groaned for a moment before the Familiar Deal forced her to act. She was bound to follow any reasonable commands, and simply sharing what she did wrong was definitely reasonable.

“I planted a purple disc-thing in the east wing of the palace,” she said, shifting her stance so her arms were locked around his neck and she was hiding from his sight behind his back.

“And why did you do that?” Jeb asked, already suspecting the answer.

“Because that guy who sent us the letter said he could help get the bomb out,” she admitted.

Jeb rubbed his throbbing temple. “You’re grounded.”

“NOooooo!” she screamed, her voice waning as she ran out of air to shout into his ear.

“Yes. Assuming we live through this, no candy for a month.”

Piwaki blinked. “That’s it? The creature unleashed an undead apocalypse on my home, and that’s all you’re going to do?”

“Nooooo!” Smartass moaned piteously, staggering back and forth, clutching her face. Her apparent dismay seemed to mollify Piwaki somewhat.

“I want you to keep in mind that my fairy was tricked by some rich kitri into planting that bomb. I would direct your attention toward the one who orchestrated this. She orchestrates…”

Jeb glanced back down at the moaning fairy, who was dragging her hands down her face and stretching out her cheeks and eyelids.

“She orchestrates very little.”

Piwaki leaned down and waved in front of Smartass’s face to get her attention. “Excuse me, creature. Do you know who gave you the bomb that disabled the Myst wards in the palace?”

“Some bird guy.” Smartass shrugged, momentarily forgetting about her existential sorrow.

“Did he give you a name?”

“No.”

“What did he look like?”

“Like a bird.”

Piwaki seemed to be getting frustrated, if the tension in his long neck was anything to go by. “Any specific details about him?”

“He seemed kinda young, I think. It’s hard to tell with your people’s wrinkly hands. Wore fancy clothes.”

Piwaki sighed, rubbing the bridge of his beak.

“Oh, wait. He said his sister was a Damsel in the emperor’s harem.”

Piwaki’s eyes shot open. “I know exactly who did it.”

“Really?”

Piwaki nodded. “Not too many young men out there whose sisters are in the imperial harem. I even remember we threw her a going-away party at the academy after she got her Class.”

“Joining the imperial harem is…a good thing?” Jeb asked, thinking of scantily clad dancing girls working for little to no pay.

“You get to be one of perhaps a dozen or so people with unrestricted access to the emperor’s ear. They basically work as a group to steer the emperor’s policy decisions, a bit like…the crew of a sailboat.”

Jeb revised his mental image to a bunch of scantily clad sailors.

“And the emperor knows this?” Jeb asked.

Piwaki shrugged. “A bit of back-seat driving is a small price to pay for power that rivals that of a demigod.”

Smartass drew in a breath through her teeth. “It might not…be quite so godlike right now.”

Piwaki and Jeb turned to look at her.

“Why?” Jeb asked.

“Well, all but one of those Damsels got turned into an undead Damsel, then ran off with the emperor’s skeleton dad, who he was hiding under the east wing of the palace.”

“Keensha bra gosh!” Piwaki barked, looming over Smartass’s cowering form. “You don’t tell ANYONE else that!”

“Hey, don’t tell my fairy what to do.” Jeb stepped between the two, before glancing back down at Smartass. “But yeah, please don’t tell anyone else that. It sounds like a secret that might get people killed.”

“Roger!” Smartass said, saluting.

“Did, umm…Casey the Third get killed or kidnapped?” Jeb asked. Jeb absolutely did not want to allow the only baby he had delivered to wind up dead. It was the principle of the thing.

“I didn’t see her when I was breaking out of the palace,” Smartass said with a shrug.

Jeb frowned and began to mull over the information he had access to, trying to decide on a plan.

The emperor was after him because he needed a scapegoat for the current situation. It couldn’t be the emperor’s fault, because that was bad publicity. Even if keeping an undead under the palace did kinda make it the emperor’s fault.

Then, should I go after the undead? No, I don’t know where they are. Should I go after Casey or her daughter? Don’t know where they are.

The guy who tricked Smartass into planting the bomb? No, I can’t do anything with him, he’s not the current problem. The current problem is that I’m Wanted by the emperor, the undead are running wild, and there doesn’t seem to be much being done about it.

I wish I could just go talk with the emperor and straighten everything out.

Jeb’s eyes widened as he settled on a course of action.

He needed better information, and access to Casey 3, which meant access to the emperor. How would he get access to the emperor without being detained? By giving the man a better person to blame than Jeb.

He didn’t know where the undead or Casey were, but he knew a guy who knew where the fop with the spellbomb was.

“Who is the guy who gave Smartass that bomb, and where can I find him?” Jeb asked, directing his gaze at Piwaki.

***Kolusk Jezzeti***

“Two weeks before we sell his stuff is plenty of time. Piwaki is obviously dead. I mean, he even wrote it in his will,” Kolusk said, holding out the document in question.

His incredibly fat friend scanned the legally binding document before peering up at him, her eyes narrowed, smoke leaking from her nostrils as she snorted.

“You obviously wrote that yourself, you boney bastard.”

“…Yeah…I’m just coping. I’m bummed I didn’t hit the portal in time,” Kolusk said. Doing a belly flop onto marble in the emperor’s court had been more than a little embarrassing. If only he’d been a tiny bit quicker on the uptake. If his Nerve was higher, he probably would’ve been able to jump into the portal in time.

They had been watching in the stands, egging each other to heckle Piwaki in front of his uncle, when the magical lighting had died, and the portal had opened under Piwaki and the rando he’d been forced to valet for.

“You’re so dumb. Why would you want to jump into a portal to the unknown like that?”

Kolusk thumbed his chest. “Daredevil.”

“Right. At least I’ve got some sense, unlike present company.”

“You’re just jealous you didn’t even think to follow Vresh through the portal. You could be braving the unknown together with her right now, sleeping in the wilderness, holding each other to keep warm at night….”

“Ach, screw you. Vresh will be fine, though,” Jeresh said, clutching her fat hands together and staring wistfully at the ceiling. “She’s so badass and spicy. The absolute best enforcer ever. I’m totally gonna be her concubine when I get out of the academy. That’s my life’s goal.”

“Does that life goal…interfere with your inheriting the will of your grandmother?” Kolusk asked with a raised brow.

“Eh…” Jeresh waggled her hand. “I’m sure I can find some wiggle room there. My gramma’s got a pretty open mind. My official role can be envoy to the Tekalis family.”

“Riiight,” Kolusk said, nodding as he put another one of Piwaki’s knick-knacks in the box. He wasn’t actually going to sell them. He was just boxing them up to ship them to Piwaki’s mother. With the fear and uncertainty going through the city, and the lockdown imposed on the academy, nobody had taken the time to officially gather up the lost kitri’s effects and return them to his family.

Kolusk felt that it had to be done.

He picked up one of Piwaki’s human books of medicine, shaking his head at the dog-eared pages that seemed to fill the entire book. Piwaki always complained about how hard his father forced him to work, and yet he never realized how hard he worked himself, when it was something he was passionate about:

Making money.

“I’m gonna miss that greedy, pompous little—”

BOOOM!!!!

An explosion rocked the academy and shattered the window of their third-floor dorm room. Kolusk nearly lost his feet as the building swayed under them, and Jeresh fell onto her fat bottom.

“What in Vresh’s name was that?” Jeresh cried, scrambling on her hands and knees toward the windowsill, the glass flowing out of her way as she crawled. Kolusk leaned over and peered out the window beside her, unable to see anything but a plume of smoke that gradually cleared to reveal several figures in the courtyard: a kitri and two humans, dragging another kitri out of the first-floor dormitory by the scruff of his neck. This was not a comfortable position, given the delicate nature of kitri necks.

Kolusk’s eyes widened as he recognized the kitri and the human with the metallic attachments. It was Piwaki! And that weird undead cyborg! And the other guy…

“Gods-be-damned!” Kolusk cried, leaping out the third-floor window. “Opportunity knocks!” He’d missed the call to adventure the first time, and learned a painful lesson: Always jump in without thinking.

“Wait, you idiot!” Jeresh’s words vanished into the wind as he fell.

Chapter 17: Deal With the Emperor

***Vresh Tekalis, Veiled Patrician, level 128***

Vresh popped out of thin air and fell flailing into the grass.

A half-dozen artifacts, evil or simply too powerful to ever be used, fell from above her directly onto her chest, rolling inward and making themselves at home.

“A little warning next time,” Vresh grumbled to herself as she pushed herself to her feet and fished the artifacts out of her shirt.

After counting them and making sure they were all present, she finally took a moment to take stock of her situation.

She was…back home already. That was certainly faster than she’d been expecting.

She was currently sitting on the well-trimmed lawn of her mansion.

HOT SHOWER!

Maintaining her dignity as the leader of the Tekalis house, Vresh climbed to her feet in a dignified manner, knocked on the door in a genteel way…then completely lost all self-control when her butler opened the door.

“Put these in the vault, make sure to note that they are extremely dangerous,” Vresh said, depositing the armful of items in the man’s hands as she brushed past him, undoing the button holding her shirt closed.

“And somebody heat up water for a SHOWER!” she cried. She had dirt and leaves and sweat and now grass stains all over her body, and she smelled like…

Vresh took a whiff of her shirt and caught a hint of Jebediah’s scent. A small part of her felt like the smell crawled up into her brain and invaded every nerve, spreading down into her arms and legs, tingling all the way down her spine and settling in her center… The rest of her wrinkled her nose at the smell of unwashed man, balled up her shirt and tossed it down the railing as she ascended to her washroom on the second floor.

Her servants were fast. Despite her rude entry and demanding a shower with no notice, they were able to accommodate, getting the water flowing before she’d even stepped under the shower.

A few moments of bliss went by before there was a knock on the door.

“This can’t wait?”

“You’re going to want to see this.” She heard the voice of her maid muffled by a few inches of wood.

“Come in,” Vresh said with a shrug. She’d entered the manor rudely and demanded a no-notice shower, so she might as well take her turn being imposed upon.

Besides, her maid had seen it all before.

“Your uncle has begun the process of declaring you dead.”

“Pfft. Is that all?”

“No, it’s fairly obvious you’re not dead, so that should be a stillborn motion. The most pressing problem is your engagement to Jebediah Trapper.”

The hot water all over her body exploded into steam, and the water from the shower sizzled and popped off her body.

“My what?” she asked, turning to face her maid.

“Well, based on your behavior in your last meeting, you were aiming to maintain your independence by pretending to be xenophilic.”

“…Right,” Vresh said, her eyes sliding away from her maid’s gaze.

“Well, while Jebediah Trapper was in good standing, this only maintained the status quo. But when this happened, your relationship with him became a liability.”

She held up a Wanted poster with Jeb’s dead-eyed, dangerous stare.

Ah, those killer’s eyes. That brow. Mmm.

Sadly, the Wanted poster did nothing to capture the cleverness his gaze displayed, the quick wit, the reflexive good humor in the face of death. The pale, cold skin, like a crisp winter given human form…

Wait, Wanted poster? Vresh’s eyes darted across the page. Wanted alive for questioning in regards to the outbreak of undead in the capital. No reward for death.

“There’s an outbreak of undead in the capital!?” Vresh demanded.

“Yes, but more importantly, as soon as Mr. Trapper began to have a less-than-sterling reputation, your uncle pushed your relationship with him, at great length, ensuring that the human’s failings reflect on you.”

“Yeah, I get that, but what about the outbreak of undead in the capital!?”

“Oh, well, I hear it’s pretty bad.”

“And what is my uncle doing about it!?” Vresh demanded.

“I just told you. He convinced the rest of your family that you’re engaged to a human.”

“Gods-damnit!” Vresh shouted, borrowing a bit of Jeb’s parlance as she strode out of the shower, trailing a plume of steam.

“Mistress, a towel?” she asked.

“I’m already dry,” Vresh said, waving her off. “Get me my undead-fighting clothes.”

Undead were notoriously smelly, and good undead-fighting clothes let the decaying goop slide right off.

“Oiled leather or canvas?”

“Leather.”

The undead had a nasty habit of being filled with juicy, rotting flesh, which necessitated rain gear for practical reasons. They also had a nasty tendency to bite. A fisherman’s full-body rain gear and heavy gloves doubled as undead hunting wear quite nicely.

Vresh chose the leather because it offered a bit more protection…

And it looked better on her.

“And what would you like to do about your uncle?”

“What I would like to do, and what I’m going to do are two very separate things.”

***Jebediah Trapper***

“Unhand me, villain!” the kitri squawked, writhing like an unruly animal in Jeb’s grip. Thankfully Jeb’s Body was still a respectable fifty, which meant the average young man wasn’t going to break his hold.

Jeb squeezed a little at the base of the bird’s spine and he went limp.

Making me chase you all the way through the freakin’ cafeteria. Little bastard. The kitri might not be a fighter, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t slippery. He had some kind of ability that made it harder to catch him with his Myst, and harder for Jeb to catch on to that fact, which amounted to a vaudeville routine where Jeb chased him around to wacky music, destroying school property in the process.

Well, from an outside perspective, I’m sure.

The best way to keep his hands on the kid was to literally keep his hands on the kid.

“You will…be killed…for this,” the kitri said, sluggish from exhaustion and restricted blood flow.

“I doubt it,” Jeb said with a shrug. From a practical perspective, Jeb was probably too valuable to kill out of hand, and while he made an okay scapegoat, the emperor would probably want to pin this on the guy who actually did the crime…probably.

Jeb was a little leery of politics, which often made lying more expedient than the truth.

“We’re gonna go talk to the emperor about that bomb you told Smartass to place. You know, the one that lowered the magical defenses and unleashed the undead on Mestikos?”

“I-I had nothing to do with that!” he shouted, still looking straight down at the dirt as they hauled him out of the massive building.

“Smartass mentioned your sister by name, Ipiyaki,” Piwaki pointed out.

“Shit. Um, you would trust the word of a duplicitous fairy over that of your own people!?” Ipiyaki’s bluster faltered for a moment before it returned in force, just as Jeb caught movement out of the corner of his eye.

A skeletal keegan jumped out of the window of the building above them, digging huge gouges into the pristine grass as he hit the ground and rolled forward, losing none of his momentum.

Above him, an orange-skinned melas girl rode a shimmering rope down to the surface before gently landing on the ground.

Piwaki’s friends.

“Featherbrain, you’re alive!” the keegan said, swiftly engulfing Piwaki in a hug that seemed to make the kitri highly uncomfortable as he struggled to escape the boney grasp.

“Kolusk, if you could just—”

“All right,” Kolusk said, releasing him and patting the shorter kitri on the head. “So where’s the adventure? What are we doin?”

A moment later, the girl arrived, breathing heavily. “I’m sorry. He’s an idiot.”

“We’re gonna turn this guy in to the emperor,” Jeb said, holding up the kitri in his grip. “Then probably undead hunting as a form of community service, and maybe rescuing a baby.”

“Sweet.” Kolusk nodded enthusiastically. “So, what’d you do, Ipiyaki?”

“I didn’t do anything!” the captive bird shouted.

“Then you should be fine.” Jeresh shrugged. “Emperor’s got the best mind-readers in the whole country.”

“Fuck.”

***Iyaki Pukuwa, Damsel level 23***

Iyaki waited with bated breath as her brother was marched in front of the emperor in Udium manacles with powerful Myst-suppressing attachments, so large they nearly covered the young man’s hands.

As for why she was present at her own brother’s hearing… Well, Pikaku wasn’t letting her out of his sight for obvious reasons.

At least I got some of what I wanted, she thought sourly. Thank the gods I at least try to keep in shape. It was supposed to attract the emperor’s attention solely to her, but if she’d been as old and fat as the other Damsels, Kiwipa would have picked someone else to run away.

And that would’ve been the death of her.

Damned spies and their damned incomplete information. If she’d known that the old emperor was undead, she wouldn’t have freed him. The plan was to reinstall the old emperor with her as the lead harem member.

If she’d known, she would have simply blackmailed the emperor a little in exchange for a bit of extra power within the group. Nothing so wildly crazy as this.

Surviving the former emperor had been far too much of a narrow thing.

But…halfway to warning Pikaku, she realized that if she were just a little bit slow to deliver the news of his father’s escape, she could be the only harem member.

So she loitered for a minute or two.

In the end, it made no difference whether she hurried or not, because the emperor had felt the loss of his harem’s Favor, and immediately knew something was wrong. He’d been long gone by the time she arrived at his vault. Clever Kiwipa.

Iyaki’s gaze had landed on the chubby human baby in the center of the compromised vault, and the flame of jealousy bloomed.

‘Even now, my stupid boy protects the wrong investment: that demigod he’s been raising in secret, rather than the pillars of the empire. He believes I would go after the shiny new toy he’s bragged of, rather than his foundation.’

Demigod. Shiny new toy.

The Kitri Empire was founded by men who seized opportunities when they saw them. Why should Iyaki be any different?

Owing to the emergency, the burst-open door, and the emperor’s sudden flight, the royal guard had been just rattled enough for her to distract him and steal the baby.

The entire time she rushed down the halls with a wailing child in her arms, if she was stopped, she would claim to be ‘escorting the child to safety’, and that would become the ‘truth’.

But by some miracle, she’d managed to use the chaos to steal the emperor’s demigod out from under his nose. It had been, and continued to be, incredibly risky, but if everything played out correctly, she’d be the matriarch of a new empire.

“Ipiyaki Pukuwa.”

The emperor called her brother’s name, his voice cold and hard like a knife to the throat.

This was not everything playing out correctly.

The emperor’s golden throne had tiny curls of gold rising from beneath his claws digging into the armrest.

“My seers, shamans, mind-readers and advisors all agree. You fucked up. You conspired to commit treason—poorly, I might add, which is insulting enough in light of its marginal success. But you also lied on your selective service papers. It says here that your Myst Core creates a slippery substance that allows you to squeeze through small openings.”

Her brother maintained his silence.

“That’s clearly not the case, as upon closer examination, you seem to have cultivated a Myst Core modeled after Kiwifui’s Unbinding Myst, out of some misguided youthful rebellion. A Myst Core that is strongly discouraged, I might add.

“But I digress. We were talking about treason,” Pikaku said, rising from his seat, his talons pulling out of the soft gold with a light ping.

“We know what you did. We know why you did it,” Pikaku said as he stepped down from the throne. “But something that seers and mind-readers fail to grasp is emotion. I want to know how it felt to send your home into utter chaos. I want to know how it felt to throw away your country and your allegiance to it based on faulty guesses and assumption.”

Her brother, the idiot, glanced at her. She’d subtly led him to believe that the harem was mistreated. Not in any way that could be traced back to her. Just a subtle hint from a friend here and there. And the stupid boy had gone off on a crusade, like she’d known he would.

Now she just needed him to not drag her down with him.

“It felt like justice was being done. It only reinforced my surety that you are unworthy of bearing your father’s title, when you decided to hide in here like a coward instead of—”

Goodbye, brother. You were my favorite pawn.

Pikaku snarled and rammed his claws through the prisoner’s chest, surprising nobody but the two in the center of the room.

“Noooo!” Iyaki cried, if only to maintain the illusion of a caring sister.

Her brother’s eyes were wide with disbelief, while Pikaku had a sour disappointment in his posture. He left the corpse where it lay, returning to his throne, and rubbed his beak with his clean hand while imperial guards removed the body.

“You monster!” Iyaki said, taking a carefully weighed risk. Her brother had just been killed for insulting the emperor, but she was far more valuable, and wasn’t already awaiting execution. Evincing an emotional reaction to the death of her brother was necessary to avoid suspicion, even if it provoked a bit of the emperor’s ire.

“Be silent,” Pikaku said, turning his neck to cast a bloodshot glance at her. “Do not think I overlooked the traitor’s relationship to you, the only survivor of this debacle. I’ve not gone daft. When this is over, you will undergo a nightmarish level of scrutiny.”

Iyaki straightened her spine, her heart fluttering wildly. “It will find me blameless,” she lied, projecting confidence.

“That remains to be seen,” Pikaku said, before glancing back at the puddle of blood in the center of the room, slumping back in his throne.

“I just failed many of the lessons my father taught me about leadership,” he said to no one in particular.

“Jebediah Trapper.”

***Jeb***

Here we are, in prison again, Jeb thought to himself, staring at the heavy stone ceiling. It was fantastic, to say the least, that looking up at the ceiling only caused the tiniest amount of discomfort, rather than a slowly building panic attack.

Of course, they had arrested Jeb immediately upon him turning the kid in. That was expected. The collar and Udium manacles were within reason as well… They just made certain things difficult.

It was the most over-the-top cell Jeb had ever been in, closer to a vault than a jail cell for people, with ten-inch-thick walls—measured at the doorframe—a heavy duty vault-like door on bigass hinges, and air holes the size of a man’s pinky.

The funny thing was, it was actually quite nice on the inside, almost like a penthouse. Which made sense, because when you’re arresting people who can tear apart steel with their bare hands, they’re:

A: Probably nobility.

B: Less likely to attempt escape if they’re luxuriously comfortable.

If only these damn things weren’t on my hands! Jeb groused internally, staring at the grapes placed in the center of the room.

The heavy metal door opened softly, obviously well-greased or magical.

“You’re up,” the imperial guard said as he opened the thick metal door.

“Can I go to the bathroom first?” Jeb asked, nodding down at the massive hunks of metal around his hands. Between those and the collar deadening his Myst, he lacked the dexterity to use the little toilet in the cell.

The guard gave him a glassy, humorless stare.

“Fine.”

Jeb followed the guard down the winding hall until he was once again in front of the emperor. This audience room seemed more cozy than the other one. It was only the size of a modern suburban house, rather than a pro baseball field.

“Jebediah Trapper.”

The emperor sat on a throne seemingly made of gold, slumped over in a way that spoke volumes about how tired the man was. His arm was bloody up to the elbow, and the ground sported a rather large puddle of blood along with some streak marks where a body had been dragged away.

That doesn’t bode well, does it?

Jeb carefully stepped around the puddle, raising his gaze to meet that of the emperor.

“You’re probably wondering why I’m hiding in my castle like a coward.”

Jeb shrugged. It had occurred to him, but he knew better than to call the emperor a coward. Jeb was only a little suicidal at the moment. His PTSD was starting to fade, after all.

“Leave us,” Pikaku said to the guards.

They hesitated for only a moment before obeying his commands. The kitri woman standing next to him made to leave.

“Not you,” he said, pointing at her without looking.

Once everyone was gone, and it was just the three of them, Pikaku leveled with him.

“My father turned nearly a dozen Damsels and escaped.”

“I don’t know what the implications of that are,” Jeb said with a shrug.

“I am level three hundred and twenty-eight,” Pikaku said. “With twelve Damsels granting me their Favor, it was effectively level four thousand seven hundred and seventy-seven.”

“Damn.”

“They’re undead now. With my father. Somewhere in the city or beyond. I don’t know if they still have the ability to grant their Favor, or some profaned version of it. If they have even a fraction of the power they used to, they can make my father strong enough to snuff me out like a candle.

“Only in the seat of my family’s power, where layer upon layer of Myst, Impact, and Fate intersect, would I stand a chance against him.”

Pikaku cocked his head, studying Jeb. “I’ve issued a general summons for enforcers to clear the city of the infestation.”

“Sounds like reapers will take that as an opportunity to misbehave,” Jeb said. People who killed other people just for the copious amounts of Impact were a blight on society. Sapient creatures were easily worth many times the Impact, even if they were physically weaker.

“That they will.” Pikaku sighed. “And many enforcers are likely not to answer the summons. Undead hunting is dangerous, dirty work. Those that arrive will either be idealistic, or opportunistic, looking for fast hunting in a chaotic environment where misbehavior will go overlooked. If one of these opportunistic enforcers learns of my enervated state, they may feel it worth the risk to attempt to kill me.

“Not to sound arrogant, but I’m worth quite a bit of Impact.”

“No, I get it,” Jeb said, nodding.

“I’d like to thank you for keeping my nephew alive, but you also had a hand in these events, however unintentional, so I can’t simply send you on your way.”

Here it comes… Jeb thought.

“So I’d like to make a Deal with you. I understand that your power is bound to your word?”

“That’s right,” Jeb said, nodding.

“Destroy my father’s remains and those of the twelve missing Damsels, freeing them from the curse of undeath. Clean up this mess we both had a hand in. Clean it up good, and tell no one of my father’s identity. If you do these things, I will grant you the full support of the Kitri Empire for a specific request, ten thousand gold marks, or lands and a title of my choosing.”

“In addition to forgetting about my involvement?” Jeb asked.

“Of course. As far as the public will be concerned, the two of us are blameless.” He nodded toward the puddle of blood. “The Pukuwa family unleashed the undead as part of a coup attempt. That will be the ‘truth’.”

The brown-feathered kitri woman standing beside the emperor gave a strangled gasp that was quickly choked off.

Hmm…can’t really use the money or the land for myself, since I’m dying. The emperor knows that. So, either I’ll will it to another person, or I’ll take the ‘full support’ and apply it towards my bomb condition.

So basically, he’s trying to pay me with something he was going to give me anyway before this shit show happened, except with a nasty price tag attached to it. Also, there’s a loophole that if one of them dies, but I didn’t kill them, he doesn’t have to pay me.

“Let’s work on the wording a little,” Jeb said.

“I’ll put my honest best effort towards the task, and when all of the targets are destroyed, I get my choice of rewards, assuming I’m still alive. If I am not, set aside the money in a trust for my orphanage.”

“The way you phrased it would see me paying ten thousand marks if you explode the moment you leave my presence.”

“The way I see it, the chances of that are slim,” Jeb said.

The bird-man gave Jeb a long stare, the scales weighing in his mind.

“Those terms are acceptable,” Pikaku said.

“Before we make a Deal of it,” Jeb continued, “I’d like to ask: Where is Casey the Third?”

The emperor seemed to slump even further into his chair, his long neck bowed. “I don’t know.”

“So, not dead?”

“Presumably not.” Pikaku sighed and scratched the feathers of his neck. “There was no evidence of her being killed. It seems some opportunistic scab took her during the confusion of the attack…or my father took her. I’m not sure.”

“What would an undead want with a baby?”

“That’s a very special baby,” Pikaku said. “But I’ll speak no more on the subject. Do we have a Deal?”

Somebody needs to get the Caseys a LoJack, Jeb thought sourly.

“Deal,” Jeb said.

Click!

***Emperor Pikaku, Uniter of the Continent, Ruler of Mestikos, level 328***

Once the human was gone, Pikaku slumped down into the throne and thought about Casey the Third.

He should have summoned the little girl to him the instant he realized she was gone, but her disappearance had been so overshadowed in his mind by the realization that his father was on the loose, that he’d simply forgot. A major oversight, but one he could easily rectify.

Were he not a coward.

Pikaku’s ability only worked on those weaker than him, and given enough power, someone like his father might even be able to take advantage and ride the wave of Myst straight into Pikaku’s presence unimpeded by protections that might normally stop them.

Father knew about this particular weakness of Pikaku’s in detail, and if he had Casey, he would absolutely take advantage of it.

If he didn’t have Casey…Pikaku was leaving a little girl in the hands of kidnappers out of cowardice.

Pikaku knew he should coldly think about himself as the keystone of the empire and risking himself was tantamount to risking the lives of millions of his subjects…

But he just couldn't rationalize away the guilt.

Chapter 18: Jebediah ‘Best Effort’ Trapper

Jeb felt the Deal lock onto his very soul. All of a sudden, he wanted nothing more than to put every resource at his disposal into finding and destroying the undead menace in the city.

Wow, I haven’t been this motivated to kill people since the late 2000s, Jeb thought as his mouth bucked and began talking without him.

“Do you have any information on where to find them? I need to know what their behavior patterns and weaknesses are, if they have any. I don’t have any experience fighting undead, and I don’t know how natural ones operate.”

The emperor’s neck waggled limply in a halfhearted kitri smile. “You truly are bound by your word, aren’t you?” he asked.

“Every second we stand around talking about things other than killing my targets is a moment wasted,” Jeb said, inwardly cringing at how edgy it came off. “Please understand, I literally can’t help but put my best effort toward this.”

Jeb inwardly hoped that the undead didn’t pick up on this and use Casey the Third as a hostage, because the compulsion he was suffering at the moment made her life seem far less important than it had a moment ago.

“Very well,” Pikaku said, pointing. “Head out that door, take the second left. There will be a one-eyed melas in an armory with a map of the city. He has the information you’ll need. You can’t miss it.”

“Thank you.” Jeb spun on his heel and turned toward the door before a thought occurred to him, prompting him to face the throne. “Does he have a key?” he asked, raising the Udium mittens.

“Indeed, he does.”

“Excellent.” Being wrapped up in Myst-suppressing manacles would make putting his best effort forward difficult.

Jeb turned back to the door and followed the directions, winding up in a room lit by an array of lamps spewing smoke onto the ceiling. They must have turned back to analogue lighting in case of emergency.

It smelled sooty.

There was indeed a one-eyed melas man at a table which was surrounded by a ragtag group of dangerous-looking folk, with a map of the city spread out in the center.

Facing away from him was a woman with a particularly peach-shaped bottom vacuum-sealed into shiny waterproofed leather.

Jeb would’ve stared longer, but that wouldn’t have been putting forward his best effort, so he strode forward and placed his Udium mittens on the table beside Vresh, making eye contact with the one-eyed melas.

“I have it on high authority that you have the key to this,” Jeb said.

“Oh, Jeb. Good to see you’re alive,” Vresh said. Piwaki’s melas friend leaned over Vresh’s other shoulder and gave Jeb a jealous scowl.

“Likewise. I was worried she might’ve teleported you somewhere distinctly unpleasant,” Jeb said, rubbing his wrists as the metal fell away from his wrists and neck.

He scanned the surrounding crowd. There were half a dozen enforcers and three people who absolutely didn’t belong there.

Across from him was a suit of wicked-looking black armor, presumably Jessica, chatting with Kolusk, of all people.

To the right was the snooty keegan enforcer he’d met last year at the Vex Debacle. She glanced at Jeb’s restraints with a hint of amusement.

To the left was Vresh, and beyond that, her fangirl, trying desperately to act casual. There was a gecko-person Jeb didn’t recognize licking his eyeballs at the corner of the table.

Piwaki was sitting in the corner, clutching his temples.

Jeb considered telling the college students to go home, but his best effort wouldn’t allow him to pass up free red-shirts.

“For those of you who’ve just arrived, this is a map of the southwest side of the city, the Jikubei district. The undead have been using the sewer systems—”

Called it.

“—to hide from the daylight and spread their essence across the city.”

“Spread their essence?” Jeb interrupted.

“The miasma that animates the corpse and occasionally buds off to infect the dead or sickly? It dissolves in sunlight, and has been traveling through the sewers.”

…I don’t know as much as I should about undead.

“I’ll hold my questions,” Jeb said, motioning for the man to continue.

“These are the earliest reports of activity,” the melas said, pointing at dots on the map. “The activity was heaviest in the slums and homeless camps on the fourth and fifth night since…” He glanced at Jeb. “...the event. At the palace.”

‘Best Effort’ Jeb didn’t bother to dignify that with a response. Too much time embroiled in recrimination and complaints, not enough time killing thirteen very specific undead.

I wonder if I should go nuclear on them? Jeb thought to himself. The only thing stopping him was the fact that he had no idea where the bad guys were, and he might miss one and put himself out of the game. An icy sliver of dread in the back of his mind whispered that he should have defined ‘best effort’ a little better.

Jeb’s best was suicidally good.

Well, that’s neither here nor there. Jeb refocused on the briefing where the melas described the spread of the undead through the sewers and where their concentrations were most likely.

“Concentrations?” Jeb murmured quietly so as not to interrupt the meeting. I wonder if it’s like in I Am Legend, where they sleep in huddles.

“Tell you what,” Vresh said, throwing an arm over his shoulder. “You may have a freakishly good understanding of fae, but I’ve smote my fair share of rot-bags. I’ll give you the lowdown on fighting them.”

‘Best Effort’ Jeb ignored the way she pressed against him, the way Smartass quietly bared her teeth and bit Vresh’s finger to no avail, and the way Jeresh’s scowl deepened.

“Much appreciated,” Jeb said, glancing over at Vresh.

The melas finished his briefing and set everyone loose. Enforcers weren’t generally the kind who worked together. The assault on Vex was the exception that proved the rule. Normally, it was like herding cats. In fact, as soon as the melas stopped speaking, two of the enforcers wandered off.

If they knew that it was Pikaku’s dad, would they group up and work together?

Probably, but Pikaku wanted it hush-hush, and Jeb couldn’t exactly break his word.

Jessica gave Jeb a lingering glance and a nod before leaving, while Kolusk returned to Piwaki in the corner of the room.

“Guess what, Piwaki?”

“What?”

“One of the enforcers has a similar power to mine! She said she was, and I quote, ‘impressed at the synergy between my Core and my Class’!”

“That’s nice,” Piwaki said, rubbing his temples with the pads of his fingers. “Can we go back to the academy now?”

“Are you kidding?” Kolusk said. “Who would rather huddle in a tiny box waiting for the undead to drag them out, when they could be bringing the fight to their decomposing faces!?”

“A level twenty-two healer with no combat power, and a complete incompatibility with the undead, maybe?”

“What!?” Kolusk exclaimed. “You got two levels in the last two weeks? Oh, we’re definitely going on the adventure.”

“It was three days.” Piwaki groaned, avian face sinking into his clawed hands. “The time dilation just made it longer for you.”

“You got two levels in three days!?”

“More like one fight,” Piwaki admitted.

The keegan Daredevil clenched his fist. “Oh, Void yeah.”

Meanwhile, Jeb’s mind was whirring. He couldn’t afford to spend days and days culling mindless undead infesting the city’s sewers while the emperor’s dad got away.

The chance that the former emperor was still in the city was vanishingly low.

If it were Jeb, he’d leave behind a smokescreen comprised of a rapidly spreading undead infection, while he took the more powerful undead somewhere remote where he could stabilize his position, grow in strength, and recruit an army.

Somewhere out of the way, possibly somewhere rural. And definitely somewhere it would take a long time to receive word from that bad things were going down.

“How do you normally track undead?” Jeb asked.

“Sometimes, when you get lucky, you can use a family member,” Vresh said. “Sometimes they have dreams, visions, or a compulsion to go to them.”

Interesting. ‘Best Effort’ Jeb would have used the emperor to find his father, but he doubted the establishment would tolerate that. More effort than it was worth.

“Other times, you use rumors and signs. People disappearing, half-eaten corpses, that sort of thing. Then you put the footwork in, search every abandoned house, every dried-up well, every disgusting sewer, until you catch their trail.”

Vresh pointed to her nose. “When you get close enough, you can smell them. Rotting meat stinks, but rotting meat that moves around is on an entirely different level.”

Hmmm… I might have a fix for that. I need to talk to Eddie. The science of what I’m considering is beyond me.

In the meantime, he needed to catch and kill some undead.

A flicker of golden light in the back of his eyeballs caught his attention for a moment, before the lanterns on the walls sputtered in sync, and two beams of light crossed on a specific section of the map, brightening it momentarily. Mab, still messing with me? Jeb thought, irritated. What was her goal? Was she trying to distract him? Irritate him? Well, it was working.

“What’s this district here?” Jeb said, pointing to the section of the city on the map that sported buildings with oversized lawns.

“The Kalida estates. It’s where the moderately wealthy and minor nobility call home.” Vresh frowned and shook her head.

“Places like that have good security and their individual levels are usually high as well. The odds of it being an undead hotspot are vanishingly slim. They don’t even have proper city sewers, so it would be difficult for the miasma to concentrate. Why do you ask?”

“Because I’m looking for fancy undead who are used to a life of ease, because it’s the last place we would look, because I’m getting hints to visit, and because the other enforcers have already taken the sewers around the slums,” Jeb said with a shrug. It was also because he was feeling a bit irritated and wanted to take it out on pompous jerkwads in rich suburbs who couldn’t defend themselves against him. That was just icing on the cake, though.

“I suppose,” Vresh said hesitantly. “But the vast majority of these families will be unwilling to allow an enforcer on their property.”

“We’re private citizens,” Jeb said, reminding her of her current status.

“My, I’d nearly forgotten,” Vresh said, pursing her lips before smirking. “I suppose I don’t have to follow regulations anymore.”

Note to self, figure out how to defend against causality magic. Jeb was half-tempted to avoid going to the district he’d chosen in a minor fit of pique, but he had no clue which decision played into Mab’s designs. So he would save his energy and only struggle when he knew for a fact it would put mud in her eye.

Metaphorically.

Jeb didn’t need any more reason than because she was a crazy bitch who put a baby in a key and threatened an entire race with annihilation for upwards of a thousand years.

If even a tenth of the stories about her were true, Jeb had about a hundred more reasons to distrust every action she was involved in. But until he knew exactly what she wanted, he couldn’t afford to second-guess everything.

So I guess we’re going to rich-people central, Jeb thought idly. Wonder what they have in store for me.

***Majenki Slivvens, level 3***

Majenki, or Maj to his friends, kept his breathing as quiet as he could as the monster passed by the panic room.

‘Get to the panic room!’ his father had shouted. That was the last time he’d heard his father’s voice. Awakened in the middle of the night to that one phrase, Maj had hopped out of bed like a startled hob and scampered into the panic room.

He’d waited, but his sister hadn’t shown up. He heard the sound of a struggle, breaking wood and his mother’s screams. Then all was quiet.

Then the sniffing. A rumbling breathing like a boar, but deeper. Like nothing he’d ever heard before. The creature made the stairs creak with its sheer weight.

It was seconds away from coming up above the stairs and seeing Maj, when he did something he would regret for the rest of his life.

He shut the door.

The Myst-powered door sealed the room shut, just ahead of the stomping footsteps of his sister, who’d been flushed out of hiding.

There were some thumps against the door, and Maj heard the muffled sounds of his sister screaming as he desperately tried to open the heavy vault door again. Then the entire house shook as something slammed up against the panic room, hard enough to knock Maj onto his butt.

His sister didn’t make any more noise.

But the crunching noises that followed forced Maj to clap his hands over his ears.

That was…three days ago…maybe? He’d slept three times now, but it might have been longer. He was exhausted, there was no day or night in the panic room, and he absolutely dreaded falling asleep.

Then the nightmares came.

Nightmares about his father, staring down at him disapprovingly. A compilation of all the times he’d failed his father, all the disapproval his parents had ever leveled at him.

‘As a new house, we Slivvenses have to stick together. The first few generations will be critical to make our name something widely known, and that means you’ve got to dedicate yourself to that name. Everything you and your sister ever do will be to benefit the family. Everything you have is the family’s. You belong with us. You belong to us.’

******

Maj started awake, his chest pounding painfully, eyes gummy with tears, and throat painful from screaming.

Sniff. Sniff.

The enormous…thing outside of the door was sniffing at the door of the panic room again, likely drawn by his screaming.

Maj held his breath.

It felt like it took hours before he felt the subtle weight of the house shift as the creature turned and moved away. Back down the hall, back down the stairs.

I’m so hungry, Maj thought, curling in around his empty stomach. There had been food and water in the panic room, but not more than a day’s worth. His father had said, ‘If we’re stuck in the panic room for longer than a few hours, we’ve got bigger problems than hunger.’

GROOOOAN.

Maj’s stomach gave a painful rumble as he tightened into a ball, just wishing he could eat one of his mother’s pastries.

Wait a moment. Maybe I can! Maj’s sense of danger was numbed by the gnawing sensation in his guts. His mother had made a batch just the day before…it happened.

Maybe there were still some in the freezer.

Frozen tarts were better than no tarts.

Maybe I can sneak around the thing and get to the kitchen! Maj thought, eyes widening as he uncurled, hope lending his limbs a bit of extra strength.

Whatever the thing was, it was fairly regular, moving back and forth like a man pacing in thought. It had just left, so maybe he could leave the panic room, go outside the house onto the roof from his sister’s bedroom, then wait for the creature to come upstairs again, then enter the kitchen window and sneak some food out of the freezer.

The plan was about as good as it was going to get.

It did not occur to Maj to simply leave his home through his sister’s window and run to the nearest guard-station and let someone else handle it. His home was his entire world, and some irrational part in the back of his mind held out hope that if he simply stayed put, his parents and sister would return.

Maj slowly and carefully opened the panic room door, listening for any indication that the creature below had heard the metal scraping that echoed like thunder in his own ears.

Nothing.

He waited there like that for who knew how long, lingering in the tentative safety of the doorway, ready to slam the door shut any second, his heartbeat drowning out his breathing. Finally, a pang of pain from his stomach reminded him of his purpose in leaving the safety of the panic room.

Maj crept forward, making a beeline for his sister’s room, where he would be able to get out onto the roof, and away from the main hall that the creature paced often.

As he was reaching Preska’s window, he glanced back. He didn’t know why exactly, just a terrified desire to watch his back even though the monster couldn’t possibly be behind him.

It was worse.

There was a sister-sized splatter of blood against the dented metal door, roughly the size and shape of one Preska Slivvens.

No amount of childish naivete could convince him that his sister wasn’t dead.

Maj doubled over and retched. His stomach was empty, but the contents came up nonetheless, a thin thread of acidic bile that he spat onto the ground between heaving gasps.

ROOOAAR!

Grief and self-recrimination took a backseat to sheer unbridled terror, and Maj bolted to his feet, sprinting for the panic room as the creature lumbered up the stairs to the cracking of wood.

It was deceptively fast. Maj spotted a shadow flickering on the hallway’s carpeting, where it was waiting for him just outside the door.

Maj hastily backpedaled as a gigantic malformed hand reached into the room, grasping for him. His breath caught in his chest as the hand emerged into the light of Preska’s window.

The hand was Preska, somehow melted together with her mother’s torso, which seemed to undulate obscenely as the monster reached through the doorway, too large for its entire bulk to fit through.

Preska’s eyes were blank and staring as her entire body grasped for him, each limb a hideous finger of the amalgam. As the terrifying ‘fist’ clenched, it compressed the poor girl’s lungs, giving a gasping moan every time it snatched at Maj’s scrambling form.

The boy didn’t have time to think, dodging around, up and over the hand, quicker than he’d ever been in his life, quick as a mouse and twice as terrified. In a sudden burst of desperate inspiration, Maj threw himself toward the window with every fiber of muscle he could muster. He tumbled through the window in a shower of glass.

He thought he might have felt a ripping sensation in his clothes, and spotted a bit of blue, but he couldn’t feel a thing.

His body froze when he heard his sister’s voice moaning just above his ear, an instant before her arms and legs locked around him.

“Nooo!” Maj finally shrieked, turning animalistic and savage, scratching and clawing as he tried to free himself from her grip.

He felt her cold skin begin to soften against his as his mother’s distended torso began to retreat into the darkness of the Slivvens manor. To add him to the rest of the family.

No no no no nononono!

“NOOOO! I don’t wanna die, let me go! Let me GO!”

Riiiiip.

A tearing sound echoed in Maj’s ears as his sister’s grip loosened on him.

Maj tumbled to the roof before falling awkwardly off, his fall completely out of control, the flagstone walkway under the eaves approaching his skull at a breakneck pace. If he’d gone feet-first he might have simply rolled an ankle, but this was going to be bad.

‘Maj, don’t run around on the roof, you’ll break your neck!’

His last thoughts were of his mother’s consternated warnings.

Maj tensed, awaiting the inevitable crack, and oblivion.

At least it was better than what was waiting for him back there.

A second went by.

Two.

Maj opened his eyes.

He was floating right-side up, in front of what seemed to be a scraggly peasant human, with their odd yellow-brown to brown skin color and hair on their faces. This one was a yellow human and had a bit of hair growing around his mouth, and seemed to be missing a leg.

Beside him was a rather large melas woman, a slightly smaller one, a kitri and a keegan, all staring up at the roof of his home.

Maj had no idea what would cause such a diverse group to approach his family’s manor, but he said what he’d been trained to say to strangers on their property. “If you’ve come to meet my pa, you best have an appointment. Solicitors should direct themselves to my father’s office rather than our home.”

“AHAHAH!” The human burst into their weird, hooting laughter.

“Ma and Preska tried to melt me into fingers,” Maj said, his scales tightening as he hyperventilated.

“Okay, now I feel bad for laughing,” the human muttered, and thrust his hand out.

Crack!

There was an echoing crack of wood as the creature lunged out of the window and into the light, pouncing on him like a…

Wait, it’s not pouncing at all. If anything, it seemed to be…flailing, struggling against some unknown force keeping it in the air.

It was the first time Maj had been able to look at it, and he wished he hadn’t. Father had been dealt a mortal blow, split from shoulder to ribcage. His arm had fused with his head, creating one of the five legs the creature strode on. His other arm made another, and his legs moved together, creating the third.

Gramma was the last two.

Ma was wound around Father like a serpent, penetrating his flesh to maintain her grip on him, almost woven together, connecting father and Preska in an unnatural embrace.

Maj felt like passing out.

He should pass out and save himself the pain.

But he pried his eyes open. He needed to see it. He needed to see how it ended.

The human reached up with another hand, squinted a bit, then surrounded his family with a tube of white-hot fire. The tube shrank as the inhuman amalgam let out shrieking squeals that slowly faded to nothing, until the tube winked out of existence.

And his family was no more.

Maj passed out.

Chapter 19: Suburb of the Damned

“Undead are a perversion of life, as more than anything else, they are motivated by hunger.”

“That tracks,” Jeb said, thinking of Borg. The undead cyborg did seem to have a fixation with eating and biting things.

“The undead are theorized to possess a way to process Impact outside of the System. It’s widely considered uncouth to suggest anything is outside the System, but…”

“Yeah, there’s obviously stuff outside the System.” Jeb shrugged as they walked through the sun-dappled walkways that led through the strangely empty neighborhood of rich people. Maybe it was strangely empty, or maybe there just weren’t that many in the first place.

“Like someone with a Vow—” Vresh tapped Jeb’s shoulder for emphasis. “—undead seem to process Impact in a more organic way: by eating everything they can get their hands on. A portion of the Impact of a fresh kill goes to their personal strength, and a portion goes to the miasma they generate, making it more likely to spread to the weak or dying.”

Jeb nodded along to Vresh’s lecture on the undead, detailing every little thing she’d absorbed from two different purges that she’d been actively involved in.

“So they don’t turn people they’ve bitten? No zombie rules?”

“What’s a zombie?”

“It’s a…” Jeb realized there were simply too many zombie movies to really pin down what a zombie was, so he shrugged.

“Generally, the person who an undead feeds on will be dead. However, if the person manages to survive long enough in a weakened, near-death state, in a high concentration of miasma, then they have a good chance of turning.”

“So like, if an undead hunter was mortally wounded in the sewers, that would be more dangerous than one mortally wounded aboveground,” Jeb said, connecting the dots.

“Yes.”

“Any specific materials undead are sensitive to?”

“Well, you already know that they don’t like sunlight, but they can tolerate it. Fire is only useful for destroying the corpses after they’ve been ‘pacified’.”

Jeb recalled all the movies and video games where a well-placed Molotov cocktail could put down a swarm of undead, dramatically collapsing into piles of burned flesh.

“Fire is only useful when they’re already dead? Why not set them on fire while they’re alive?”

“Because it doesn’t kill them fast enough,” Vresh said. “They’re usually made of rotting flesh, which is historically juicy and not particularly flammable. If you light an undead on fire, then you’re stuck fighting an aggressive torch, which makes things far more complicated than they might be otherwise.”

“But as far as a material that they’re ‘sensitive’ to…not really.”

“So, do they stop moving when you destroy the brain?”

“No. The corpses are animated by miasma, which suffuses every part of their bodies. They’ll still be moving after they’re completely separated into limbless chunks.”

“Then you burn them.”

“Then you burn them,” Vresh agreed.

“Okay, I think I’ve got most of the important info,” Jeb said, nodding. It wasn’t sounding good. Intelligent undead were on a completely different level than mindless automatons, both smarter and stronger, and they didn’t even have much in the way of exploitable weaknesses.

Not only that, but Jeb would have to destroy them thoroughly, rather than a simple stake through the heart or a decapitation.

First you quarter them, then you burn them to ash.

Is there really anything here? This place seems like it would be too well-guarded for undead to spread… Jeb wondered to himself. Was he just seeing things, assigning magical importance to memories of decisions made on a whim? Jeb had seen how faulty the human mind was when it decided it didn’t want to bear responsibility for its actions.

Forget Mab messing with him. He vehemently didn’t want to be messing with himself. Self-deception was a huge stumbling block. Jeb carefully re-checked his memories and decided that yes, he’d seen that flickering of light on the map, and he was pretty sure it had pointed to around here.

“Do you really think there’s something here?” Piwaki asked, always the first to complain out loud. “The Jikubei district is a gated community filled to the brim with high-level nobles, merchants and retired adventurers. This is probably one of the worst places an undead outbreak could occur. They’d cull them easily.”

Above them and to the left, a salamander child jumped out of the window of a mansion, sprinting across the roof a moment before a hand made of the fused flesh of another salamander person reached out and seized him around the waist.

“You were saying?” Vresh asked.

And that’s why I don’t open my mouth, Jeb thought, whipping out the Myst strings. Makes me look smarter.

***Later***

“Hey, kid,” Jeb said as he patted the salamander-kid’s cheek. “Vresh says it’s bad to fall asleep around miasma. Seriously. You could turn in your sleep.”

“Allow me,” Kolusk said, pulling out a flask of something, before Jeresh stopped him.

“You wanna kill the boy? Here.” She held out a little waterskin to Jeb.

“Says the person who drinks paint thinner.” Kolusk snorted.

Jeb cautiously accepted the mysterious liquid and smelled it, aware of melas drinking habits.

“It’s water!” Jeresh said, throwing her hands up in the air. “Everybody drinks water!”

Jeb didn’t smell anything wrong with it in particular, so he splashed it on the kid’s face.

“Ah!” He woke up with a start.

“Vresh says not to lose consciousness around miasma,” Jeb reiterated for the kid’s benefit. “It’ll try to turn you.”

“In my dreams, they were calling to me,” the little salamander-person said.

Well, that’s creepy.

“That’s not a good sign,” Vresh said, leaning over the two of them to peer into the child’s eyeballs. Her foot slipped on the curb and she nearly gored Jeb with her horns.

“Ow,” Jeb muttered, rubbing his scalp. “We’re gonna get you somewhere safer, but for right now, just follow along in the middle of the grou—”

A tap on his shoulder interrupted his words, and Jeb looked up.

Vresh wordlessly motioned to the surrounding suburban mansions, which seemed to be regurgitating undead out into the streets in broad daylight.

“I feel lied to,” Jeb said sourly, glancing up at the Amazonian warrior above him.

“I said they dislike sunlight,” Vresh stressed, drawing her swords as the corpses of hundreds of the well-to-do closed in around them. “There’s no rule against them attacking us in the daylight; it just means they can’t infect us…unless they drag us into the shadows.”

“I like my monsters with exploitable rules,” Jeb said, climbing to his foot, keeping a strong grip on the child’s shoulder as he scanned the terrain.

“Alright, listen up, kid,” Jeb said, weaving a ring of plasma around them, so hot it could be felt against the skin from ten yards away. In a fit of creativity, Jeb created a celtic knot at the end and fed the beginning of the loop into it, like a present topped with a pretty bow, then let go.

The burning beam of plasma hung there, circling around them and ever so slowly losing heat.

Jeb chuckled with delight.

“Things might look bad right now—”

“Oh gods, oh gods, oh gods,” Piwaki said, rocking in the center of the street, clutching his skull and hyperventilating.

“But you’re actually pretty safe,” Jeb said as the first of the undead reached the ring of plasma, cutting itself in half. Jeb could have sworn the creature had a stunned expression as it flopped to the ground, only for twin blades to emerge from a shimmering portal and lop its limbs off in two smooth strokes.

“Hey, isn’t that Masha’s dad?” Kolusk asked, hefting a slender hammer with a weighted head. The keegan Daredevil kicked forward in an unnatural burst of speed and put his entire body weight behind the hammer, smashing in one of the creatures’ skulls.

It immediately got back up.

“Oh, no,” Jeresh said, her hand on her chest. “Masha is going to be devastated.” She cocked her head to the side. “Then she’s going to be rich.”

“Maybe you should start working on getting in her pants instead, then.”

“Kolusk! You know that—” Jeresh paused, glancing guiltily at Vresh. “You know I’ve only got eyes for someone else.”

“Just saying, it would be a damn sight easier than—”

“Less talking, more lopping!” Vresh said, approaching Kolusk and shoving her left-hand sword into the Daredevil’s hand. “Hammers are for shit against undead. They don’t care if you break their bones.

“And you!” She rounded on Jeresh. “What are you doing to help, right now?”

The melas girl was startled into action.

“Umm, yes! This, Ms. Tekalis!” She threw her hand into the air dramatically, and Jeb saw a dozen or so streams of dark blue Myst emanate from her hands and reach out past the horde of undead to shatter the windows. The razor-sharp fragments of glass began to tear through the air back to her, turning into flying shrapnel, lopping off several appendages on the way back.

That’s good control, Jeb thought. If she could control glass, she would probably be able to help with the lopping more than—OW!

Jeb tugged a shard of glass out of his shoulder and gave the young woman a careful, weighing glance.

Would it save him a lot of trouble if he crushed her to paste right here? Would saving himself that trouble be a part of his ‘best effort’?

Jeresh must have seen the look in his eyes, because the melas girl paled and turned away, devoting all her attention to forming blades of glass and sweeping them through the horde.

That acknowledgement of fear gave him a reason not to kill her. It told him he could keep her in line until he was done honoring the terms of his Deal, which meant keeping her alive was part of his ‘best effort’.

In any case, Jeb whipped himself up some telekinetic armor: a little bubble of personal space, including the child. No more friendly fire.

Piwaki continued to rock in place.

“Piwaki, get up.”

“No, I can’t!”

“Spoken like someone who wants to die,” Jeb said.

Piwaki glared at him with a bloodshot eye. “What do you know!?”

“I know what survivors look like, and I know what victims look like. Right now, you are committing yourself to being a victim.”

Piwaki gulped and rose to his feet on trembling legs.

Jeb scanned the battlefield.

His ring of plasma was slowing the tide of undead down, while Kolusk was zipping around the battlefield in a way that distinctly reminded Jeb of Jessica’s inertia control. Vresh was a whirling dervish, her lithe form severing limb after limb in a flurry of motion.

But Jeb could tell she was holding back, mostly acting as support, preventing Kolusk and Jeresh from being attacked in their blind spots, putting down corpses they hadn’t quite sealed the deal on.

Is she accommodating the kids? Jeb mused.

Jeb took a button off his shirt and built a sword onto it, creating a knot of Myst at the place where it was connected to the button.

Please don’t explode, please don’t explode, Jeb thought, a bead of sweat emerging on his forehead as he worked.

When it was done, there was a self-sustaining blade of force jutting out from the button, complete with a handle beneath it. It would probably last a couple minutes. Not long, but long enough for Piwaki to contribute.

It was weightless, but sharp.

Jeresh was standing mostly still, orchestrating panes of glass that bisected undead left and right, aiming to be MVP of the fight.

“Get Jeresh’s attention, tell her you’re going to watch her back, then stand behind her and flail at anything that gets close.” He grabbed Piwaki’s shoulder and aimed him at the glass-wielder.

“Why do I have to tell her?”

“Because friendly fire is a real problem,” Jeb said, rubbing his hand across the wound in his shoulder and showing Piwaki the bright red blood. “Don’t want you to get bisected because she didn’t know you were there, right?”

“Right.” Piwaki nodded and headed over to Jeresh, flagging her down and getting her to acknowledge his presence before getting behind her, clutching the sword in trembling claws.

Jeb and Vresh shared a glance and nodded, slowly retracting their assistance until the three college kids were dealing with the majority of the undead all by themselves. Jeb’s ring of plasma slowly cooled and the string Myst disintegrated, allowing the full brunt of the undead horde to settle on their shoulders.

“You got babysitting duty?” Jeb asked, glancing at the three of them fighting desperately back-to-back, gasping for air with bloodshot, terrified eyes.

“Of course,” Vresh said. “This was my idea, after all.”

There wasn’t much benefit to be had from a level hundred and twenty-eight killing a minor horde of undead. But three level twenties could experience a significant power-up, both in levels and practical experience.

Jebediah ‘Best Effort’ Trapper hadn’t been ignoring everyone’s words. He believed them when they said undead shouldn’t have been able to infect this neighborhood. That meant that something strange had happened that allowed this to happen. One of his targets, perhaps? Those were likely the only undead strong enough to kill a wealthy neighborhood.

On Pharos, wealth and martial might were synonymous.

He didn’t want to treat the symptom; he wanted to find and purge the root cause.

Jeb’s attention was briefly drawn back to the fight as Piwaki gave a squawk, his sword poofing out of existence in his clawed hands, just as a pair of gnashing teeth were heading for his face.

Jeb tensed for a moment, until Piwaki reflexively punched outward with a knife-hand, his fingers tight together, aligning his natural claws into a blade, which punctured the rotting corpse up to his elbow.

That was trained into him, Jeb mused.

By sheer luck, the strike severed some of the last remaining bones holding the creature together, and it fell apart, leaving Piwaki staring at his own hand in wonder.

Vresh winked.

She’s obviously got the kids under control, Jeb thought.

“Hold on tight.”

“Hold on whAAAAH!” The salamander kid’s voice rose an octave as Jeb flew into the air, surveying their situation.

If only something convenient, like an arrow, pointed in the direction of the bad guys.

It was the smell that brought it to Jeb’s attention. The smell of rotting flesh was one of the most viscerally awful things a person could smell, and Jeb had long since become intimately familiar with it.

Some of the corpses smelled a bit more off than others.

It was hard to tell how decayed the aliens were at a glance. Because they weren’t human, their appearance was hard for Jeb to judge based on eyesight.

Everybody rotted the same, though—smelled the same as they decayed.

And the least rotten, freshest corpses were in…that direction.

Jeb turned his head toward the street where the most recent undead were coming from.

That gave him the general direction, but it didn’t give him the exact location. If the mastermind behind this was making any serious attempts at hiding, he doubted this would pan out, but he still had to take the shot.

Jeb flew the two of them past the advancing line of undead toward the last house on the street, at the end of a little cul-de-sac. The house itself wasn’t spewing undead like the others, which was probably a good sign.

Either they were still alive, or the mastermind was hiding in there.

There were other options of course, like the place being abandoned, but the first two were the ones he was concerned with.

Jeb raised a hand, grasped the knocker, and after a moment’s consideration, lifted his pinky finger before rapping the heavy metal against the door.

While he was waiting for the survivor to come to the door or the ambush to reveal itself, Jeb considered the best way to track down Pikaku Sr.

Track down, track down… Jeb’s eyes went wide as he recalled a previous foe who was thankfully still alive.

That keegan with the poisoned letter that tried to kill me half a dozen times… Kol, was it? He had a pretty easy time finding me whenever he came at me. I think he had some kind of Class-based gimmick that allowed him to track me down anywhere I went. Maybe I can ask around to see if there’s any Class-specific ability that allows people to unerringly find other people. Then all I would need to do to narrow down the undead master’s location would be to find one of these Classes.

I’d rather not tap Kol for help if I don’t have to. The guy’s got a bug up his ass about— Jeb’s thoughts were cut short by a soft scrape and a frightened whisper.

“What do you want?” the person behind the sliding panel of wood asked, peering out at him. All Jeb saw was a glitter of eyeball and the bridge of a beak. Brown feathers.

A kitri, then.

“Hello, ma’am. I’m working for the emperor with a group of people doing a survey of the local area. Have you seen anything strange or out of the ordinary lately?” Jeb asked with a straight face as zombies mobbed a ragtag group of teens in the street a couple hundred feet directly behind him.

“Aside from that?” she asked, her gaze flickering to the battle going on in the background.

“Yes’m.” Jeb nodded.

The kitri rolled her eyes. “No, and if you’re not here to do anything about that, then you aren’t worth my time.”

The panel slammed shut.

Jeb knocked on the door again, but there was no response. Deeper inside the house, he could faintly make out many hushed whispers and a baby crying. There were probably a lot of people from around the neighborhood sheltering in the last mansion on the block.

Jeb knocked some more. Harder. It wasn’t smash o’clock yet, not for being rude.

Finally the voice returned, although the panel didn’t open. “What?” The woman’s voice sounded angry and strained.

“Whoever killed the people on your block seems to have miraculously stopped at your home. I’m skeptical of the miraculous. If you’ve got people in there with you right now, I would suggest abandoning your pride and gravitating towards the relative safety of me. One of them might be more than they seem.”

Jeb shrugged as he continued. “Even if you just got lucky, it seems like now would be a good time to seek shelter elsewhere. The neighborhood isn’t quite as safe as it used to be.”

Understatement of the year.

“The House Pukuwa does not shrink in the face of duty, and right now that duty is to provide stability to our community. We will not leave,” the muffled voice said.

You stupid f— Jeb bit back the cursing. “If you don’t leave this house in the next two minutes, I’m probably going to have to kick the door down, and things will get heated,” Jeb said. In more ways than one.

“If you wish to attack civilians trying to survive, do what you must.”

Bull…shit.

Jeb wasn’t buying it. Maybe. MAYBE they had collected all the survivors from the rest of the houses, but at the first sign of someone trying to get rid of the undead, they should have been ecstatic. Or joined in the purge.

Or…

Something didn’t sit right with Jeb.

Jeb picked up the gecko kid and flew over to Piwaki, who yelped and held his hands up in a chopping motion.

“One sec.” Jeb formed a blade of telekinetic Myst around the group before unleashing it in a circle outward, bisecting the majority of the undead on the street.

“Hey Piwaki, what sound does a kitri baby make?” Jeb asked.

Piwaki’s neck wobbled in consternation as he and the rest of the team caught their breath. “I’ll not tolerate any more of this disres—”

“Being totally serious. What sound does a baby make?”

Piwaki sighed and made some hooting noises.

“What about your people?” Jeb asked, looking at the salamander boy he’d been hauling around. The boy made some croaking noises.

Jeb pointed at Kolusk and Vresh in turn, but didn’t get anything remotely resembling the sound of a human baby.

That was a human baby.

It clicked into place. The neighborhood was a gated community. Old money. Connections to powerful people. They didn’t have any humans, let alone human babies.

There was only one human baby of note floating around the city that would make someone consider weathering an undead uprising rather than be exposed as possessing her.

A fraction of a second later, Jeb smashed foot-first through the solid oak door two hundred feet distant.

It was smash o’clock.

Chapter 20: A Landmine Named Jeb

***Kiyiki Pukuwa***

Sometimes bad things happen. Sometimes all the bad things happen at once.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this, Kiyiki thought, her beak hanging open as she overheated in the stuffy mansion. All the windows were locked tight by the survivors, who themselves contributed to the muggy heat that made her feathers itch.

When the heir to the family name hands you—the most distant cousin and glorified maid—a human baby and tells you to hide it somewhere as far from anyone connected to the family as possible without asking any questions, you do as you’re told.

Unless a malignant force begins stalking the streets of your gated community at night, killing and turning neighbors one by one.

The owners of these mansions were mostly dead, but each household typically had at least three hired servants and several children.

The Dreyfus house had fifteen! But they laid large clutches, after all.

In short, there were plenty of noncombatants in each home that chose discretion as the better part of valor when the screaming started.

Each night, they’d been pushed further and further down the street. Herded like breek.

Everyone who went for the gate never returned. Some of the survivors argued it was because they had successfully escaped, but that was just wishful thinking. If they had escaped, the wrath of the empire would have fallen upon this…darkness haunting them.

No.

The cry for help did not reach the outside.

It was after a few nights of this that Kiyiki learned of the disappearance of the emperor’s ward, a human child one year of age.

Kiyiki glanced over at the fat little creature once again trying to escape her imprisonment.

The baby froze at Kiyiki’s gaze, one chubby leg slung over the crib’s railing. In a completely unnatural act of situational awareness, the child slowly withdrew her leg, sitting back down in the crib.

For now.

Gods, if I don’t get eaten alive, I’ll be executed, she thought, her heart sinking.

The only light at the end of the tunnel was the possibility that the emperor would forgive her if she kept the baby alive and well through this plague and turned on her cousin at the FIRST possible opportunity.

If the undead hadn’t prevented her from handing the infant off, the baby would already be out of her hands and Kiyiki would have unknowingly already been complicit in treason.

Her gaze drifted past Casey the Third toward the three women who had offered to watch the baby.

The three of them were older, with a little bit of grey in their feathers, and sunken, wrinkled bags under their eyes. Grandmothers of three different houses, they doted on the child, cooing and offering the baby sweets, watching her while Kiyiki got some much-needed sleep.

Casey didn’t seem to like them, but Kiyiki didn’t care.

She didn’t even mind their poor hygiene and the funky smell that seemed to emanate from their clothes. In Kiyiki’s long experience cleaning shit-streaked rooms, old people just had a harder time taking care of themselves. Or perhaps they simply didn’t care anymore once they got past a certain age.

Both?

BOOM BOOM BOOM!

Kiyiki jumped in place with a stifled yelp as the knocker created a booming echo that brought every single survivor to attention.

The three old women in the entrance hall swiveled their necks to face the door in an eerily synchronized manner, but Kiyiki didn’t have time to overthink it. She was on door duty.

It was a human, strangely enough.

His appearance was scruffy, and he was oddly cavalier about the literal end times, but he radiated power, so much that Kiyiki nearly lost her breath through the door. It was like she was standing face-to-face with an enforcer.

And he was working for the emperor.

He’s after the baby! Kiyiki realized an instant into the man’s speech. If she did not personally return the child, then she was simply an accessory and going to die a vreek’s death.

The baby heard the man’s voice and began crying.

Kiyiki’s heart rattled in her chest as she hastily told the human to get lost.

A tiny voice in the back of her mind screamed at her to hand over the child right now, but she was too panicked to listen to it. The larger, more terrified part of her mind wanted to distance herself as much as possible, hide the child until she could control the circumstances.

You fool! She cursed herself as the aura of power departed from the doorstep, leaving them with an ultimatum to come outside.

Now you’ve done it! she thought, smacking her forehead and matting down the feathers in the universal gesture of self-recrimination.

I’ve got to make this right. I’ve got to…

Kiyiki’s thoughts finally settled on the man’s actual words as she turned back to the hall.

They might be…among…us? Her feathers fluffed up, standing on end as she spotted the three old women, standing silently beside the crib, the baby squirming in the iron grasp of the one in the middle. The others flanked her like statues, silently watching Kiyiki.

The baby wasn’t crying because of the voice. She was crying because they’d picked her up. And they were being none too gentle about it.

“Kiyiki Pukuwa,” the middle woman spoke.

“Yes?”

“We appreciate you keeping this morsel alive. She will be like the mythical Kupeiwa. Her flesh will allow my master to touch the Divine.”

The shawls the old women wore had come loose, revealing grotesque, rotting wounds. The smell was suddenly impossible to ignore, and the wounds…they spread beyond the shawls. One of them even had a large part of her skull missing, exposing sinus and brain.

It suddenly no longer felt warm in the mansion.

“The charade has ended earlier than expected. Your services will no longer be required.”

Hyperventilating, Kiyiki looked past them at the other survivors. They looked a lot…deader than she remembered. They watched her with mindless hunger.

Kiyiki’s heart began to hammer in her chest as she backed away, every fiber of her being screaming in her ears to run, fight, surrender, beg, plead, in a confusing wash of impulses that weakened her knees.

She collapsed, scooting backwards with a quiet mewl as the three intelligent undead approached her, moving in lockstep.

BOOM!

Behind her, the door exploded.

The human flew over her head and landed on his feet in front of the three creatures in a shower of wood shards.

They directed their full attention on him as he spoke.

“Alright, where’s the baaaaaayyyyy…”

The human’s eyes dilated, his jaw hanging slack.

***Jebediah Trapper***

Jebediah Trapper lay low to the ground, covering in camouflaging shrubbery, waiting for his chance, like a spider hunting a centipede. The high-tensile wires strung across the engagement area deep in the Peruvian jungle were connected to Claymores that would, like their namesake, cleave the enemy asunder. No human could survive being hit by one of the devastatingly effective explosives.

Today, though…today, Jeb was after a monster.

He heard it approach, the distinctive shuffling sound and disgusting yawning gargles that passed for breathing.

It was bigger than him, nearly half again, stronger, faster, and he was ashamed to admit it, smarter.

The only advantage that Jeb had was surprise.

He leveled his rifle, breathing out slow and steady, timing his shot to the beat of his heart.

The door opened, and Jeb unleashed hell.

“Ow, ow OW!” Roslyn shouted as Jeb’s semi-automatic paperclip gun peppered the front of her faded Grateful Dead T-shirt with tiny bits of steel.

Rather than blindly barrel into his web, Roz simply leaned back and slammed the door shut, cutting off any potential for a dramatic, overwhelming victory and leaving Jeb sorely disappointed.

The white twine woven between the bunk beds, desk, lamp, and bookshelf hung unused, making the room truly seem like it’d been webbed up by some manic spider.

Unfortunately, his prey was too sharp to charge in and get tangled up in the strings.

Dangit, I knew I should’ve used less strings, Jeb berated himself. Sometimes less is more.

“Really?” Roz demanded, peeking back into the room and surveying his traps while Jeb desperately reloaded his gun. “You’re not supposed to— You know, setting traps for people is a symptom of ass-burgers!”

“I don’t have ass-burgers!”

“Do too!” Roslyn yelled back, sticking out her tongue.

“You suck!”

“Clean this mess up and get ready for bed. It’s a school night, Jeb!”

“Make me!” Jeb shot back, smug in the assurance that his room had been thoroughly protected against any assault that Roslyn could mount on his fortress of solitude. He’d even booby-trapped the window.

Roz lifted an eyebrow, a cold, calculating look of surgical dispassion on her face. She clicked her flip phone open.

Oh, crap.

It was embarrassing to admit, but Jeb had memorized the dial tones that emanated from the cell phone when Roz dialed his mother. She had an out-of-state number for her office.

“I’m doing it!” Jeb shouted, climbing out from under the desk and shrugging off the camouflaging covers that kept the majority of him concealed from the visual spectrum.

“There you are,” Roslyn said, voice emotionless, head tilted to the side in a way that felt a bit off.

Jeb didn’t have any time to think about it, because he was too busy taking down the strings and cleaning up his room before Roz dialed that last digit and tattled on him.

Jeb didn’t have time to undo the hundreds of knots that he’d tied around the room, so he pulled out his pocket knife and started sawing away at the twine while Roslyn watched him with a critical eye.

I should have used a painter hitch, Jeb thought, scowling as he wasted perfectly good twine by cutting it prematurely.

What’s a painter hitch? Jeb paused for a moment as the thought nagged at him strangely.

“Tick tock,” Roz said, pointing to her wrist in an exaggerated manner, despite not having a watch.

Grumbling, Jeb got back to it, disconnecting all the obvious traps in the room.

He’d put a lot of effort into the pencil launcher hidden in the corner of the room, and didn’t want to take it apart if he didn’t have to.

Finally, his room was relatively clean, save a few hidden traps that he was still working on, and wouldn’t need until next time he hunted the most dangerous game.

There is the question of lethality, Jeb thought, rubbing his chin in contemplation as he put his knife down on his desk and kicked the pile of strings across the floor and towards the trash bin in the corner of the room.

“Pick it up,” Roz said, shaking her head. “I swear to god, if I’m late for my date with Charlie…”

“Sucking face in a Chevy. Sounds like a great time,” Jeb muttered, despite being secretly curious. He would never admit that to his babysitter, though. Never in a million years.

Maybe I could ask Sam… Nah. Ella? Nah, she already got married to that Colt jerk.

Jeb straightened, his arms filled with a bundle of strings, facing the trash can in the corner of his room as his mind began to work overtime.

Ella married Colt and got pregnant right out of high school. She even broke her leg while pregnant, which was why Jeb remembered it so clearly, watching one of the sweetest girls he’d had a crush on in elementary and middle school walking out of a grimy Pizza Hut hugely pregnant and limping along on crutches.

It was what they called a flashbulb memory.

But…I’m in fifth grade.

Jeb was given no more time to digest that as Roslyn’s arm wrapped around his neck.

“Roz, what?” Jeb croaked, barely able to speak through her hold.

“You know, I always thought about doing this, but never got the chance,” Roslyn whispered in his ear, her other hand securing the sleeper hold. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw his babysitter’s face sag, like a piece of melting wax.

A bolt of panic shot through Jeb, and he reacted. Don’t go for the arm, you could scratch at it all day, it isn’t gonna make them let go.

Jeb didn’t have all day, either. He knew he had nine seconds before he passed out. He didn’t know how he knew that, but it didn’t matter. He didn’t have any time to spare navel-gazing.

Jeb bucked forward, straining every muscle in his torso as he tried to get Roslyn to stumble forward towards the desk.

The biggest pitfall of the sleeper hold was that for the next few seconds, Jeb’s hands were free, and Roslyn’s were not.

The next seven seconds, anyway.

“Not so fast!” Roslyn yanked backwards on Jeb’s neck, dragging him away from the desk, his fingers bare inches away from his knife.

“You’ve a more resilient mind than I gave you credit for,” Roz said, her beak brushing against his ear and making the hairs on his neck stand up. “A very sneaky, crafty sort, aren’t you? It occurs to me that I should know your name. There aren’t many humans who can resist this much. Not that it matters. Goodbye.”

Fading fast, Jeb spotted a string on the floor.

It was connected to his pencil launcher.

A lot of things happened at once.

Jeb felt some kind of phantom pain, jabbing into his throat like a cold steel knife, seemingly nicking his skin through Roslyn’s chokehold as he collapsed forward, yanking on the string with his toes.

The cold steel vanished, leaving a point of stinging pain above his jugular.

Not-Roslyn staggered, drawn into the line of fire as the rubber-band-propelled pencil shot through the air.

Jeb’s vision was darkening, interspersed with sparkling lights as his brain cells gave up one by one. He barely made out the pencil as it shot past his face, barely missing his eyeball and burying itself in the meat of the monster trying to kill him.

“AgH!” Not-Roslyn’s grip loosened for a moment, and Jeb’s vision came back. Desperately, he reached back, grabbed the pencil buried in her arm and started stabbing at everything in arm’s length.

Not-Roslyn shoved him away, staggering backwards as Jeb fell to his knees, gasping. He glanced up at the strange bird-creature wearing the Roslyn mask, her feathers jutting out from his babysitter’s ill-fitting shirt like a scarecrow’s straw.

Her clawed hand was clasped over her eye, blood oozing between the pebbled skin of her fingers. Her other eye burned with fury.

Whaddya know? I really am hunting monsters, Jeb thought, his grip tightening around the bloody pencil as he pushed himself to his feet.

***Kiyiki Pukuwa***

There was a moment of silence as the human came to a halt under the direct gaze of the three women. No, not women. Uskelis.

A breath later, the three seemed to shake themselves out of a trance, sharing a wordless glance with each other. The one on the left spoke.

“You’ve a more resilient mind than I gave you credit for,” the leftmost undead said, ignoring Kiyiki’s trembling form as she strode forward, unsheathing a blade from a hidden compartment in her clothes with a languid flourish. “A very sneaky, crafty sort, aren’t you? It occurs to me that I should know your name. There aren’t many humans who can resist this much. Not that it matters. Goodbye.”

Kiyiki’s heart leapt into her throat as the vacant-eyed human stared into the distance, allowing the Uskelis to slip up in front of him and ram the stiletto into his throat.

A lot of things happened at once.

The instant the blade pierced the human’s skin, a violent explosion of invisible force blasted the Uskelis, flinging the undead backward like a doll.

Kiyiki yelped and ducked as the creature flew over her head and slammed into one of the columns supporting the second story, making a kitri-shaped impression in the cracked stone…and a hole the size of a man’s fist where the magic lance had perforated her and everything beyond.

“He’s fighting it!” the right-hand Uskelis shouted, raising her hand, her head tilted down in determination. Kiyiki scrambled backward, her feathers rising as she felt the sheer quantity of Myst streaming above her.

Kiyiki was not sensitive to these things, and she could practically taste the magic in the air.

“Aaaaa…” the human groaned, his hand trembling as it slowly rose, palm facing the three undead, his eyes still fixed on a point in the distance, jaw slack. On his neck was a drop of blood.

The Uskelis against the pillar pushed herself to her feet, a quarter of her skull torn away around the eye socket, exposing brain and bone, as though she’d been struck by a ballista.

“...LLLLLL…”

The kitri with the dagger charged forward and attempted to grasp the human’s head. A moment later, a flurry of whizzing noises exploded around the human, and Kiyiki was ironically saved by the Uskelis, who tumbled past her again. Even with the shield, it seemed as though half a dozen invisible blades buried themselves in the walls and floor around her, outlining her body.

Kiyiki scrambled backwards before she checked to make sure she had all her arms and legs.

“...PHAAAA,” he groaned, his eyes flickering side to side, nearly rolling back in his head like a man struggling to stay awake.

“Mystic Trapsmith. I remember this one now. Hold,” the center kitri said, handing the baby to her companion.

The baby!

The undead kitri knelt in the hall and placed her hands on the floor.

Kiyiki gasped as the floor softened and became liquid beneath her. For a desperate instant, she thought they would shove her into the liquid wood and earth beneath it, but they didn’t pay her a second glance as she flopped out of the liquified hallway, hauling herself into a side room as the paralyzed human sank down into the liquified battlefield.

“SSSSSTRRRR…”

The human’s voice was cut off by bubbles as he sank beneath the smoothly flowing wood and stone.

The undead jerked her hand away from the floor, cutting off the effects of her Myst, freezing a popping bubble of liquid wood in place and sealing the human into his tomb.

“There, that—” The three abominations paused, training their gaze on the spot the human had disappeared with eerie focus.

As one, they scattered, diving into the side doors on either side of the mansion’s halls.

Kiyiki let out a squawk as the hall was filled with a deafening roar. The floor heaved and ripped up and flung itself outward in a massive cone of force, picking up the majority of the mindless undead watching their masters fight and turning them into squishy chunks smeared against the far wall.

Then the pillars and staircase to the second floor came loose, their heavy stone catapulting out the side of the manor, leaving a gaping, blood-smeared rent in the old building.

A rumbling shook the mansion from beneath it.

Kiyiki scrambled to her feet and dove toward the window.

***Piwaki, level 26 Mystic Cosmetic Healer***

It was finally over. The last bag of rotting meat collapsed into a pile of uselessly twitching limbs. Piwaki collapsed to his knees, too tired to care about the entrails he was undoubtedly smearing onto his tailored clothes.

“Thank every one of the gods,” he gasped between pants, his mouth hanging open to better rid himself of the built-up heat.

“Think I sprained something,” Kolusk muttered, rolling his shoulder and elbow with a frown.

“This is why I always say your methods are crude and inefficient,” Jeresh said, looking down her nose at the taller keegan as best she could.

“Six levels,” Kolusk said, sticking out his long, hollow tongue.

“How—I only got five!” Jeresh complained.

“Four,” Piwaki muttered, head in his hands. He’d joined late and done little, and still earned a fair amount of Impact for dispatching the undead. Probably stole a bit of Jeresh’s for covering her back. The horned woman seemed to realize this and gave Piwaki a bitter glare.

“And you said rushing headlong into danger was stupid,” Kolusk said, hands on his hips.

“It is,” Piwaki and Jeresh said as one.

“Alright, children,” Vresh said, idly wiping ichor off her waterproofed leather. “Assign your Ability points and get ready for the hard part.”

“What hard part?” Piwaki asked, glancing around the battlefield. There was nothing left but scraps of meat. Maybe they had to clean it up, too? That definitely didn’t sound like fun, but it wouldn’t be particularly hard. Especially not compared to fighting for his life.

“That.” Vresh gestured behind her.

Crash!

A kitri woman bearing a squalling infant in her arms dove shoulder-first through a window. A moment later, the Juntei brickwork mansion with the elegant façade and creeping vines artfully complementing the molding detonated, trailing smoke and flame behind her.

Chapter 21: Mind Control Sucks

Jeb and his party took it in.

The moment they’d been waiting for. They’d survived two decades of brutal conflict, ever since the alien invasion had begun, starting with Not-Roslyn. People all across the planet had been attacked by murderous shapeshifting creatures hiding among them, plunging the world instantly into a violent apocalypse.

Finally, it came to this.

The end.

The obscene crystal that the creatures had been feeding the blood of millions of innocents, an ephemeral body drifting inside it, vaguely humanoid, yet over ten feet tall, forcing them to crane their necks to see it.

The source of their power.

The Time Crystal.

Jeb scanned the surroundings for an ambush, but it seemed as though the guards in the chamber before them had been the last Roz defending the crystal in their oil-slicked capital of ebony and bone.

Jeb didn’t take his eyes off the surroundings, but he took a moment to squeeze his son’s shoulder, a reaffirming gesture.

Today, they were going to set things right.

Today, they were going back in time.

Amanda glanced over at Jeb, a faint smile on her lips before she and Trevor closed the chamber off. Trevor used a handful of railroad spikes and a war hammer to block the entrance.

They could already hear their pursuit closing.

“Time Crystal!” their fearless leader shouted, raising his enchanted blade in a dramatic pose. Jeb resisted the urge to roll his eyes. There was a certain amount of grandstanding to be expected with Rory.

“We have defeated all your guardians,” Rory spoke, leveling the blade towards the crystal, “surmounted all your tests. Now we demand you grant our wish!”

“Speak.” The crystal vibrated, the gigantic humanoid figure inside twitching like a dreamer.

“Grant our heart’s desire,” Rory spoke. “Turn back the clock, undo the invasion of our reality by those we call ‘the Roz’.”

If Roslyn were alive, she probably wouldn’t appreciate vicious multidimensional parasites being named after her. Oh well.

“I cannot grant this wish. The Roz are not real.” The Time Crystal spoke, the dreamer inside twitching.

“Umm… Of course they are,” Rory said. “That’s just what we call them. The evil creatures from another dimension that invaded earth…made you?”

“I am not real.”

“Buh….” Rory deflated, his sword drooping in his hand.

“The Roz, as you call them, made the reality you currently reside in by trapping me inside this crystal. To erase them, you must wake me up. If I wake up, all of you will cease to exist.”

“What are we, then?” Trevor demanded. “Chopped liver?”

“Figments of imagination…all but one of you.”

Jeb frowned.

“One of you has my Identity and will awaken to our reality. The rest will be scattered to the wind and forgotten as dreams. Alas, I cannot tell who it is. I have no eyes, and my Identity is concealed from me, but I can feel…you are close.”

Jeb’s brows climbed his scalp. That was...weird.

“He’s gotta be lying,” Trevor said, the former weightlifter hefting the war hammer menacingly. “I say if he’s not gonna cooperate, we smash the crystal.”

“Smashing stuff is always your answer to everything,” Rory said before turning back to the Time Crystal and brandishing his sword again. “Hey, Time Crystal. You’re supposed to grant wishes and do time stuff! Do the time stuff!”

“Time Crystal is a misnomer.”

Turns out the Time Crystal is a pedant, Jeb thought, actually rolling his eyes this time.

“Jeb,” Amanda said, glancing at Zeke.

Jeb followed her line of sight to the uncomprehending kid, then met her gaze.

He understood exactly what her expression meant.

If the Time Crystal was right, and only one of the people here was real, then there was no way Zeke was real. No matter what, one of the two of his parents had to be a figment of someone else’s imagination.

Jeb’s guts twisted violently at the implications.

Maybe we’re both not real? What would that mean? If the dreamer awakened, their world would just…cease to exist? How was that any better than Roz’s eating everyone? Was there any way to prolong their reality? Long enough for Zeke to grow up?

“I still say smash,” Trevor said.

“Hold on,” Jeb said, putting his hand in front of Trevor. “We don’t know what that would do.” He glanced up at the giant humanoid figure. “What would that do?”

Boom! A massive thump rumbled against the oil-slick ebony doors wedged shut behind them.

“Destroying the crystal will destroy my higher consciousness. Your reality will persist for a time, but it will ultimately perish with me. Whether that would be days, years or centuries, I cannot say.”

“Okay, don’t wanna destroy the world, got it,” Jeb said, gently pushing Trevor back.

Trevor gave the crystal a glance that spoke volumes.

“I’m not really liking our options here,” Rory said, rubbing his chin. “Kind of a ‘damned if you do, damned if you don’t.’ What happens if we just leave you be?”

“Then this world will die when I do. ‘The Roz,’ as you call it, is a symptom of a battle between me and another in a higher plane of reality. If I remain trapped here, I will die in that reality, and therefore you will too. There is no happy ending for you here. You must touch the crystal and awaken.”

“I can’t just let you kill my…” Jeb glanced at Zeke, choking back the words. His kid was starting to get a little worried as the existential dread dawned on him.

“Am I—”

“It’s fine,” Amanda said, grasping Zeke by the shoulders. “Your dad’s the strongest mage in the world. He’s gonna figure something out.”

She met Jeb’s gaze, fifteen years of memories passing between them in the blink of an eye.

BOOM!

The door jostled in place, and Jeb could see the railroad spikes give a little.

They didn’t have all day.

“We can’t do nothing. There’s got to be a thousand Roz behind that door. We’re not getting back out that way,” Jeb said, scanning the surroundings for any sign of a way out.

“Indeed,” Rory said, scanning the room. “Maybe we can rig up some kind of blast to clear the way out… Trevor, STOP!” Rory hooked an arm around Trevor’s neck, barely preventing him from smashing the crystal.

“I don’t believe a word this thing says!” Trevor shouted as Rory and Jeb hauled Trevor backwards.

“Goddamnit Trevor, there are some damn good reasons not to break that thing, and I’ve got…”

Jeb hesitated. More reasons than anyone else. Why do I have more reasons than everyone else? Who brings their whole family on a suicide mission?

Amanda’s expression crumbled.

“Jeb, don’t,” Amanda begged. “Please.”

He remembered meeting her fifteen years ago in an abandoned FedEx truck. He remembered all the years in between, a blur of combat, romance, fighting for survival punctuated with the occasional moments of joy.

A blur.

He glanced at Trevor and Rory.

The two of them had more reasons to hate the Roz than anyone alive. They’d lost everything to them. They wouldn’t hesitate to sacrifice themselves and everyone else to spit in the eye of whatever god had made this wretched world of suffering.

Wouldn’t they?

So why was Trevor set on destroying the crystal, and Rory set on escape?

The crystal had said leaving it alone was tantamount to killing it, as was breaking the crystal. They were both angling for the same goal under different guises.

Jeb’s hair rose on his neck.

His heart slammed.

His companions were attachments, meant to stop him from waking up.

He was the real one.

What if you’re wrong!? his rational mind screamed at him.

Don’t you want to see your son grow up!?

What about your wife? What about everything you owe her!?

At the thought of Amanda, Jeb made his decision.

He would stay with her and see his days through, however long this world had left in it. He’d rather die with her than live without her as some weird higher-dimensional being.

Jeb made to step away from the crystal, but something stopped him: a nagging sensation that he could be—should be—doing more.

That’s not your best effort.

A web of Jeb’s own magic seemed to unfurl from inside him and take direct control of his limbs, causing Jeb’s foot to slide against the floor, stepping towards the crystal.

His body trembled as he tried to bring it back under his control, gritting his teeth with effort. It was magnetic, it was inevitable, like gravity. He was falling toward the crystal. A black hole.

The story only had one way of ending.

“Jeb, what are you doing!?” Rory asked, alarm coloring his voice.

Trevor didn’t say anything; he simply charged, raising his war hammer and releasing an epic bellow as he jumped.

A burst of Jeb’s Myst slapped him out of the air like a gnat.

The figure in the crystal twitched more actively as Jeb grew closer to it.

No, no, no, no, no!

“Jeb, stop right there.”

Jeb glanced over his shoulder at Rory, who had raised his weapon to Zeke’s neck, a look of fierce determination across his face.

Jeb turned around and raised his palm, the figure in the crystal mimicking his movements, its form flickering and unsteady in the crystal.

“Dad, what’s going on?” Zeke said, tears rolling down his cheeks.

“I’m sorry,” Jeb said, his throat tightening against his will before he could say any more.

“Alpha Strike.” Jeb’s voice spoke against his will, sending a wave of telekinetic blades crashing across Rory and Zeke, carving a hole through his soul.

“Just do it, then,” Amanda said from where she had collapsed on the floor, her expression vacant.

Jeb wanted to respond, but he couldn’t find the words.

The pain in his heart was so great, he couldn’t breathe.

Scratch that, I just can’t breathe.

Something was stopping air from reaching his lungs as his body was marionetted forward. He tried to breathe in, but his lungs simply couldn’t move the air.

Why? Jeb thought as tears streamed down his cheeks as his ‘best effort’ wrenched away the only family he’d ever known. I want to stay with them!

Jeb’s vision gradually grew spotty as he ran out of oxygen.

I want to stay with them!

Jeb’s body took one last trembling step towards the crystal and put his hands against it.

***Jebediah Trapper****

Jeb opened his eyes, but he couldn’t see a thing. Solid stone pressed in against him from every direction.

He was surrounded so completely by stone, he might as well have been encased in cement. His arms and legs couldn’t even twitch.

Wait, no. My right hand can move a little.

Jeb felt a little bit of air on his palm. There was fresh air somewhere. He couldn’t be buried too deep.

Jeb spun the Myst inside him, concentrating it to the best of his ability, then burst it outward, violently throwing the solid stone away.

There was a deafening explosion and Jeb found himself floating in the center of a crater dug into the foundation of a ruined mansion.

Jeb heaved in a deep breath, his vision recovering from near-asphyxiation, his mind catching up with the series of events.

A fragment of guilt about Amanda wormed its way through the back of his head and Jeb crushed it like a cockroach. It was a parasite implanted by another.

“Dick move,” Jeb muttered, looking down at the three kitri hags pulling themselves out of the wreckage.

Their eyes widened.

***Piwaki, level 26 Mystic Cosmetic Healer***

In the distance, they witnessed Jebediah’s drab clothes rise above the ruins of the mansion before blades of white-hot fire began to shower down on the mansion like shooting stars.

“He seems pissed,” Vresh said, head cocked.

“I can feel it from here,” Piwaki said, covering his eyes against the heat.

His hot-weather friends didn’t seem to mind as much.

“Well, in we go,” Vresh said, pointing toward where the ruins of the mansion were beginning to turn fluid. The liquified rubble wound up and lunged toward Jeb’s position like a snake.

“In there?” Jeresh asked, pointing toward the chaotic mess quizzically.

“Oh, no. Just keep the fringes clear of undead so we can focus on the main problem,” Vresh said. “This is where the adults step in.”

“Awww man,” Kolusk sulked.

“We’re happy to clear the fringes. Right, Jeresh?” Piwaki said.

Jeresh hesitated for a moment before a scattering of screeching black fractals emerged from Jeb and soared towards his unseen opponents, perforating the environment in the process. She nodded, and the two of them each took one of the keegan’s shoulders and steered him away from the conflict.

***Jeb***

Dick move.

It wasn’t technically a lie, as the statement was missing a subject. And anyone would agree that forcing you to kill your family to leave a mind-prison was a dick move.

Honestly, Jeb had lost that battle of wills.

He’d straight up given up and resolved himself to die with a honey-pot figment of some undead bitch’s imagination. He’d been saved by his Deal with the emperor, but it’d felt like getting his soul raked over hot coals, and was not an experience he cared to repeat.

If there was one thing that took a little bit of the sting out of being forced to experience killing his own family, it was the way the responsible party’s eyes widened as they looked up at him.

They thought he was some kind of unassailable bastion of iron will, and not a lucky son of a bitch.

Jeb wasn’t going to disabuse them of that. He may have also been a bit angry.

Let’s start with some light napalm.

Jeb compressed dozens of white-hot plasma Myst bars and dropped them down on the assembled undead, his head throbbing as he created the Myst loops to interfere and bump his kinetic energy down two levels to chemical energy.

Thick oil formed from nothing, dunking the entire mansion in goop, which then lit on fire, turning the mansion into a pyre.

A flaming wreck, which collapsed with a satisfying…

Ah crap.

The mansion collapsed—not because it was on fire, but because it had turned liquid, fire and all, flowing like a river into the shape of a massive, fiery snake, coiling up to meet him.

Jeb pulled up, but he could tell he wasn’t fast enough to beat the ceiling that was forming above him.

Why bother?

Jeb’s eyes narrowed as he wound up another set of plasma, but this time messing with the Myst’s relationship to Jeb. He was starting to get the hang of altering a spell’s behavior.

Jeb named the spell Hector, a cold-blooded hit-man with a tragic backstory that Jeb had hired to dispose of the thirteen targets of his Deal.

What emerged at the end of Jeb’s Myst string was not plasma, to say the least.

Applying Hector to the spell turned the plasma into strange, two-dimensional fractals of pure darkness that radiated cold and zoomed towards the three targets on the ground of their own accord.

Two of the kitri women seemed able to dodge or destroy the spells, countering them with targeted bursts of Myst, but the one missing a quarter of her skull failed to stop one of Jeb’s Hectors, receiving a snowflake of pure black to the shoulder blade, which proceeded to freeze her arm and torso solid.

Above Jeb’s head, the coiling serpent created a new ceiling, locking them all inside an oversized flaming dome.

Flaming spikes of stone and wood resolidified and jabbed towards Jeb like ice crystals under a high-speed camera, bouncing off his telekinetic armor.

Jeb picked out the one who was in control of the environment, following the strings of Myst back to their owner: the middle kitri and seemingly the leader of the three.

Jeb rushed forward and assaulted the undead with a score of whips of pure heat, not having the leeway to modify them.

The last undead warded off his attacks while the leader stopped attacking him with spikes. With a gesture, the frozen undead was shoved toward her by the floor itself, caught by the creature’s palm.

Damnit. Jeb clenched his jaw and tried to get past the feathered menace in front of him, but she was able to trade blow for blow with Jeb’s telekinesis. What she couldn’t absorb, she redirected away from her teammates with a blueish short blade that seemed to deflect Myst itself.

Faradan blade? Jeb thought as he whipped an arm back to avoid losing a chunk of his wrist.

The blade didn’t cut through his Myst armor so much as it warped it, allowing for flesh wounds under the right circumstances.

Flesh wounds might not kill him immediately, but they would slow him down, which was about the same thing.

Jeb whipped the blue scroll out of his pocket and blocked the feathered undead’s next attack, banking on the object’s heretofore invulnerability. The undead looked almost as surprised as Jeb was.

They didn’t take it when I was in the emperor’s dungeon?

Clang! Jeb was forced to reinforce his wrist with telekinesis to withstand the blow, but the scroll was unharmed.

The undead kitri Damsel’s brows furrowed as she drew back a heavily chipped blade. Jeb lunged forward to touch her with the scroll.

I mean, if you’ve got a ‘solve problem’ button, you might as well use it.

The kitri used her superior strength to interpose the chipped blade between her and the scroll, pushing herself backwards as the blade degraded further.

Snap!

The kitri’s blade broke, and for a fraction of a second, Jeb thought he’d gotten rid of one of his problems. When the dust settled, Jeb realized that she’d been yanked backwards by a cord of softened stone.

All of a sudden, Jeb was facing all three of them again.

The beat-up Damsel was missing an arm now, but the other two still looked like they were in mint condition, save for the missing wedge of skull.

Well, shit.

Jeb reflexively created a thick wall of telekinetic Myst between himself and them as they surged forward.

Armless shot some kind of peach-colored Myst at him, and Jeb dove to the side, but it wasn’t meant for him. It punctured a hole in his wall that the third one dove through while their leader assaulted Jeb from behind with the environment itself.

I need to finish one of them off, Jeb thought, forced onto his back foot, wasting Myst on snapping off the spikes behind him as the two undead Damsels tried to murder him.

The natural target was the severely damaged one. It wouldn’t have been too hard to take her out of the picture if her buddies weren’t covering for her so damn well.

Still, Jeb thought, watching their eyes widen as Jeb flexed his Myst Core a little bit harder to create another circle of plasma. This shouldn’t take too lo—

Jeb’s thoughts were cut off by tickling in his throat.

No, not now—

Jeb began coughing, desperately trying to maintain his footing and his focus as irradiated coagulated blood erupted from his mouth, trying to drive him to his knees.

With every cough, Jeb’s Myst constructs wobbled like a funhouse mirror and brightened in fits and starts, reminding Jeb of an incandescent bulb during a power surge.

Jeb reeled backwards, watching the undead kitri seize on his weakness through watering eyes.

Damnit!

Jeb drew in a ragged breath as he stumbled back, choking on the obstruction in his throat as he attempted to launch a shotgun volley of shrapnel forward to slow them down.

The frontmost undead ducked under it and brought her blade down towards Jeb’s neck as he doubled over, hacking into the flaming wreckage.

Jeb’s armor traps fired off and pushed the blade away from his spine, leaving a shallow gash on the side of his neck, just above the shoulder.

Jeb was able to breathe for a second and created a wall of telekinesis to shove the undead away from him before his breath caught again, forcing another bout of violent coughing.

When he opened his eyes, he was surrounded on three sides, each of the undead bearing a new short sword.

The floor beneath him softened, then hardened again in the blink of an eye, trapping his knees and wrists in the stone.

Not enough to stop him for long.

Just long enough to butcher him like a stuck pig.

Chapter 22: Curses!

Jeb couldn’t speak.

He couldn’t move.

His Myst was wobbly and uncoordinated, escaping from his control like water vapor.

Through the haze of teary eyes, he could see the three undead hags closing in for the kill.

Jeb blinked.

He blinked a lot.

Twice on each side, as a matter of fact.

The alternate activation for his ‘room full of charlies’ Myst trap triggered, and a packet of densely braided Myst unraveled from Jeb’s core, flinging a chaotic mixture of telekinetic shrapnel every direction in a vicious chain reaction.

The nearest undead Damsel was flung backwards on a pillow of razor-sharp blades, but the other two—the wounded mind-controller and the leader—were shielded by a wall of compressed debris that erupted from the liquid earth beneath them.

Jeb hacked and spat out a lungful of blood onto the ground, catching his breath for a moment to focus on his Myst.

Jeb infused the solid earth around his palm with his Myst, then shattered it, freeing his hand just as the undead recovered.

“Juggernaut!” Jeb shouted before the blood caught in his throat again.

The ‘juggernaut’ trigger was one hundred linked telekinetic bullets, set to fire from his index finger an eighth of a second apart, for a sustained fire of twelve seconds.

Jeb fired the first four telekinetic bullets into the compressed earth around his left hand, then raised his finger and swept an enfilade across the battlefield, aiming to buy himself a little time to get over the coughing fit.

Jeb caught one of the charging undead in the torso, knocking her back, but the other one twirled through his line of fire with an amount of grace that Jeb wouldn’t have attributed to an oversized undead chicken.

Jeb tore his left hand free from the perforated earth and tried to focus his Myst, but his lungs wouldn’t let him stop coughing. The only thing he could manage was to splay his fingers wide, deploying a shield trap in midair.

The undead kitri lashed out with a taloned kick, shattering through the telekinetic plane of force and landing the blow directly on his face.

If most of the kick’s energy hadn’t been absorbed by the shield, it might have torn Jeb’s head off.

Jeb’s head snapped back, his vision became a burst of stars, and he could only dimly perceive the sky and earth flipping wildly around him as his knees tore painfully out of the ground.

He heard his fancy wooden foot crack open as the torque wrenched him out of it, leaving most of it cemented in the earth.

That’s gonna cost five bulbs to get replaced, Jeb thought an instant before he slammed into the edge of the dome surrounding them.

The impact collapsed Jeb’s lungs and forced a huge glob of radioactive blood out of his throat, finally clearing his breathing in one violent Heimlich maneuver.

Jeb heaved in a shuddering breath, his vision returning as the wall tried to eat him, turning liquid and drawing him into the mishmash of patchwork debris. Really cleared that up.

Error. Recalculating Body. 50 à 48

Error. Recalculating Myst. 138 à 142

Quiet, you. Jeb’s eyes narrowed as he focused past the ominous error messages, trying to spot the next attack.

Through the haze of stars, Jeb made out the opposition charging forward. The one who’d kicked a field goal with his head was in the middle, recovering her stance, the damaged one was way ahead, almost on top of him, and the leader’s field of view was blocked by a wall of dust and debris.

Jeb and One-arm had a good three seconds of alone time.

Jeb unleashed a blast of Myst around him, freeing himself from the wall. His side twinged with pain where a shard of stone must have gotten jabbed into his side.

One-arm arrived, blade raised.

Jeb experienced a tear of pain in his head as he stretched his ability to control Myst to its limit, feeding seven budded loops of Myst back into his telekinetic Myst, the destructive resonance changing the primary string to plasma.

Jeb budded the resulting string Myst into half a dozen separate strands, weaving a simple net of blinding white fire.

With a bit of an artist’s flair, Jeb applied a relationship to the spell, but not relative to him—relative to the creature desperately trying to put on the brakes as the net of plasma blinked into existence between them.

It just wants a hug, Jeb thought with a wry smile as he launched the net forward.

The undead almost got away.

Somehow, the one controlling the battlefield through the use of her liquifying powers could perceive what was happening and looped a strand of liquified rock around her waist, yanking her backward.

The brilliant net of fire closed in around the kitri.

Faster and smoother than Jeb could react to, the undead creature was flipped sideways and thrown through a gap in the net.

Unfortunately for her, it wasn’t faster than the net itself could react.

Just wanting to give the disgusting creature a hug, the net of fire cinched down on the undead Damsel’s legs, burning a grip into the creature’s flesh, then it folded backward, reversing its orientation to engulf the trapped undead.

In the blink of an eye, there was nothing left of the former Damsel but a lifeless pile of smoldering, carbonized chunks.

A moment of silence passed across the battlefield as the two remaining undead reconvened, obviously weighing whether to risk trying to beat him or simply bail.

Not like I’d let them.

Jeb felt a small burden lift off his soul as one of the subjects of his Deal with the emperor was removed from play.

“Alright,” Jeb said, his voice hoarse as he hopped in place on one leg. “Which one of you is n-urk!”

You have gained a level!

You have gained a level!

You have gained a level!

You have gained a level!

You are now level 45!

Congratulations! You have Beaten the Ḿ̵̞̞̯̰̼̖͓͚̱̣͚̬͈̹̦̊̃̈́́̔̎̅̈̈́̕ä̵̜̭͎͔͈̝̻̏͒͋̌̐͑̎̈́̌͘͘͠͠ͅŗ̴̠̖̗͈͍̳̟͌̄̌̽̂̉̓̚t̸̛͇̰͎̱͖͕͗͆͌͊͊̔̃̃͗̓̄̽y̴̨͖̤̖̼̲͇̼͎̲̺͋̔̓̀̍̋͛̉͝r̸̰̬̩̙̼̜̯̾̈́͗̈̒̆̾̀͑̆̒͂̚̚͜͝e̶̢̡̩͖̓̊̊̕d̸̗̳͙̙͌͝ ̶͔̬̟̤̞̣̾b̴̢̮̖̞̤̻̽͋̄̈́̓̐͛͆̌̇͆r̶̻͚͙͎͈͛̽͛̓̌̄́̆͒̀̉̋͛̔̚ì̴̺̯̙̰̱́͘͘ͅḑ̸̬͈͔͕̦͇̯̗͖͉̖͂̿͆́̈́̏̓̐̊̓͒̌͒̕͜e̶̟̭͇͛͒͑́́͠,̴̧̝̺̯̹͍͒͜ ̷̡̣͚̰̫̠̟͓̼͊̄͛̈́̆͗J̷̧̧̣̳̪͕̟͓͈̱̘̬̟̆̒͌i̴͔̩̖̓̌͌̓̚͜ÿ̶̮͈̘̙̝͇͓̘́́͝͝i̸͇͓̟͎͒̍͘ķ̸̛̱̭͙̝͎̙͚̹̅͋̂̄̌̓̏̌̇̑͌̔̓̀i̸͙̲̠̲̼͉͒̀̓̇̏̾̃̽̒̚͜ in a one-on-one duel. Your s̷̨̡͈͉͔͓̗͕͕̩̜̦̭̰̫͛e̶̜̽̉l̵̨̛̘̟̰͖͇͕̻̈́f̷̣̻̠͍̰͇͕̘̼̠̝̙͔̍̚͝-̷̨̰̣̣̮̜̼̮̩͈͆͂̎̆͆͂̿͐̒̎̈́̿͐̊s̴̨̫̹̞̲͌͝ą̷̧̱͉̦̘̖̲͇̼̤̻̜̪͑̏̂͂̽̀̋̈̂̔͌͑̈́̕c̷̬̜̬̭̟̼̳͋͂̒̃̒̊͋͗̂̆̈̊͋͘͜r̷̢̡̖̹̼̟̟̣̋̒̔̊̈́͐̈́̄͌į̵̖̞͓̹̯̈́͒́f̴̢̱̻̦̩̱̖̳̫̣̝̾͛̾́̋̄̇͜͝͝͝ḭ̴̲͐͗̕c̷̖͖̠̾̀̂̐͆͛͆͝ĕ̵̍̈́̈́̕  is beyond reproach!

Č̵̦̘̠̋͂́͘͜͝u̸͇͒̀̈̊͘ͅr̶̰̰̒̏͆̚s̶̤͍͚͓͖̈́̈́̃̈́e̴̡̡̛̱̰͍̱ͅ ̸̨̢̻̩̙̦͕̎̍̅̊̕͠ö̸͓͚́̄̏f̷̧̧̠̟͚̻̀̉̆̓͘͝ ̸͔̒t̷͓̘̭͇̻̮̓̈́͘h̵̨̡͓̱͖̼͍͒̔̃̾̂͠e̵̘̦̜͓̿́ ̸͖͍̯̒̇̿̂͘Ṁ̵̢̹̤̉a̶̯̳̣͗̓̊̆̒͝r̸͖͖̭̱͎̆̀̔̈́͗t̴̢͌͋y̵͍̭͎̮͔̪̔̍͑̂r̵͔̹̗͋̎̈́̇̔̌́ ̵̯͓̜͚̘̿̈́̌̀̌͘͝g̶͇̱̺̗̓̈r̸̨̟͆͋͆̓̀̕ả̵̛̦͕̰̼͙́̀̅̓͠ǹ̴̨͍̳̖͋͋͊t̵̲͐ẹ̸̇̑̆͑̎͜͠͠d̸̺̣̮̺̥̆͑̈́͋͐̕͝ͅ

-5 Body

-5 Myst

-5 Nerve

A sensation like bad shellfish followed by a ride on the Tilt-A-Whirl while stricken down with the flu assaulted Jeb’s body: intense nausea, aching, fatigue, and a throbbing pain that seemed to radiate outward from his core.

It felt Bad.

Jeb collapsed, gasping for breath and retching.

A worrisome spurt of blood escaped his mouth, sizzling into the rubble underneath his fingers. Jeb’s vision dimmed to the beat of a pounding headache.

I guess this is how I die, Jeb thought, his vision narrowing down until the only thing he could see was the back of his hand, bones visible through the softly glowing flesh.

Softly glowing flesh? Jeb thought with the last threads of his consciousness.

He could make out the delicate bones in his wrist through the faint green glow—

The bomb!

In a moment of lucidity, Jeb realized that it wasn’t the curse making him feel like he was about to explode. He was actually about to pop. His Body was being overwhelmed by his unnatural Myst and he was hanging on by a thread.

Jeb heaved in a shuddering breath.

“Status,” Jeb said between convulsive coughs.

Jebediah Trapper

Mystic Trapsmith, Level 45

Accolades: Krusker’s Brawn, Siren’s Cunning, R-R-RubU’s Mysteries, Gresh’s Subtlety, Innovator, Ì̴̸̵̡̢̪̙͔̻̠͋ͥ̓ͥ̒͊̕̕͠ a̸̸̵̡̦̫͕̟̞͓̽͆͒ͣ̒̈́ͣ̐͑̚͜͝m̴̴̸̙͍̟̫̻͖̝͕̟̀͆ͫ́̒ͫ̔̐͝͝ в̴̴̸̡̠̞͙̝͇̻̓͒ⷡ͐̓̀ⷡ̓̓͒e̸̵̵̫̻̪͍̪͚̝͊̾ͤ̔ͤ͋̐͘͝͝c̸̴̴̡̢̞̪̼͙͖͚̫̈́̿ͨ̔̔ͨ͐̿̕̕͝o̸̴̸̪͙͖͚̘̝͚̠̾͛ͦ͊̔̽ͦ̈́̈́͛̚m̵̴̵̞̝͚̫̙̻̘̝͕͒̔ͫ̔͐ͫ͆̈́̕͝ë̸̸̴̡̡̙̘͙͓̠̞̠́͌̽ͤ̓̀ͤ͛̕͝ D̵̵̸͚̠̦͔͉̺͎̼̘́͊ͩ́͋̐ͩ̓̓̔͝è̴̴̵̢̡͇͖̟͔͓͖́ͤ̈́͌ͤ͆͛͛͝͝a̵̴̸͉͖͇̠͙͙͕͔͇͆͒ͣ͐̓͐ͣ́̾̒͝ᴛ̵̴̙̟̺͔̻̼͒̔͋ⷮ̾͘͝h̸̸̸͕͍̻͔̺̀̿ͪ̓͆́ͪ̿̾͑͜͝,̸͍͖̺͐̾̓̓̚ ᴛ̵̸͚̼̟͑ⷮ͊͘͜͝͠h̵̸̸̟͖͔͎͔̝͔͑ͪ̈́͊̽ͪ́͛́͘͜͝è̸̸̴̞̫̟͎̟͓̘͚͓̈́ͤ̓͌͛ͤ͐͘ D̸̸̴̢̡͍͍̺͉͎̦͑͒̽ͩ͌͐̓ͩ͒̔͜e̵̸̵̢̪͉͎͍̫̠͉͌ͤͤ̔̀̒͘̕͝͠s̸͎̫͇̓͑͛͛͝ᴛ̸̸̢̠̻͇͙͎̒͋ⷮ̐̓͒r̸̸̵͙͎͇̠̼̺̦̔̈́̈́ͬ͑̈́ͬ̔͌̐͜͝o̴̴̸̢̦͖̪͉͎̦͐͌ͦ̒̒̀ͦ̀̿͌͘͜y̸̪͇̙̔͝e̴̸̴̡̝͕̠̫̝̟̿̔ͤ̿̒ͤ̽̓͘͜r̸̸̵͖̼̫͓͉̝̫͌̓̽ͬ̽͛̐ͬ̾̈́͆͜ o̴̴̴̝̺̦̺̪̙͑̐̔ͦ̽͐ͦ͊̐̒͠f̴̼͍͖͑̀͘ W̸͔̻̒̿͐͜ö̵̸̸̡̢̠̫͉̺͎͚̪́̓͌ͦ͛ͦ̈́̔͛͝r̴̴̵̢̼̦͍̼͙͙̐ͬ͌̔̈́ͬ͋̽͘͘͝l̵̟̞̘͊͒͒d̴̴̴̡̫̞͔̟̪̟̾͋̀ͩ̐̒́ͩ͆͝͠s̸̝̺̪͑͌̽͛͛, Č̵̦̘̠̋͂́͘͜͝u̸͇͒̀̈̊͘ͅr̶̰̰̒̏͆̚s̶̤͍͚͓͖̈́̈́̃̈́e̴̡̡̛̱̰͍̱ͅ ̸̨̢̻̩̙̦͕̎̍̅̊̕͠ö̸͓͚́̄̏f̷̧̧̠̟͚̻̀̉̆̓͘͝ ̸͔̒t̷͓̘̭͇̻̮̓̈́͘h̵̨̡͓̱͖̼͍͒̔̃̾̂͠e̵̘̦̜͓̿́ ̸͖͍̯̒̇̿̂͘Ṁ̵̢̹̤̉a̶̯̳̣͗̓̊̆̒͝r̸͖͖̭̱͎̆̀̔̈́͗t̴̢͌͋y̵͍̭͎̮͔̪̔̍͑̂r̵͔̹̗͋̎̈́̇̔̌́ ̵̯͓̜͚̘̿̈́̌̀̌͘͝

Body 43 +

Myst 137 +

Nerve 47 +

Abilities: Mystic Trigger

4 Ability Points remaining.

Jeb reached out toward the plus sign next to the Body stat. If he didn’t reinforce his Body right NOW, he and everyone else was dead mea—

A shadow passed over him, and Jeb could make out a flicker of the undead kitri woman’s clothing. Jeb was not in a position to dodge, block, nor Myst the problem away. All of those actions would cause him to split open with nuclear fire like overripe fruit. An overripe nuclear fruit.

Well, shit.

Jeb decided to race her to the punch, reaching for the plus sign anyway.

Maybe she’ll only cut off a limb instead of my neck.

CLANG!

Out of the corner of Jeb’s eye, he spotted Vresh’s leather pants, standing between him and the undead assailant.

“You don’t look so good, Jeb.” Her velvety voice barely made it past the beat of his strained heart drumming in his ears, causing him to chuckle. It seems like I never look so good around you. Ow, laughing hurts.

Jeb pressed the plus sign beside Body four times.

Confirm?

Doi!

Jeb mentally jabbed YES!

“I swear I’m not trying to look helpless,” Jeb said as he caught his breath, the nuclear blush receding, the extra Body barely keeping it in check.

I need to get the goddamn nuclear splinter out of my fifth-dimensional body before I have another episode, or we’re gonna have a problem.

It seemed as though he’d stumbled across his ignition point.

Jeb cleared his throat and shoved himself upright, scanning for evil old bird women.

With the introduction of Vresh, the undead immediately changed tactics. The two remaining intelligent undead broke in two different directions, forcing Jeb and Vresh to each choose one.

Vresh sprinted after the one she’d blocked, a flurry of blows aimed at the giant pigeon, who warded them off with a dense shield of purple Myst that seemed to cause Vresh to miss more than it actually deflected her sword strokes. Lavender? Maroon? I blame my color-ineptitude on my penis.

The undead Damsel kept the sword at bay, but she simply wasn’t as fast as the ex-enforcer, who cut through the smoke and rubble like the prow of a ship, her legs a blur of motion underneath her hips as she closed the distance, each portalled strike growing closer than the last.

Jeb could tell Vresh was going to win that one, so he looked toward the leader, who was already sprinting away to the west at highway speeds, the same direction the rather unobservant maid had bolted with Casey 3.

Shit!

Jeb picked himself up with Myst and launched his ass toward the undead, gaining on her in a matter of seconds.

From Jeb’s vantage point, he could see the three stooges acting as a buffer, patrolling the block, culling the tide of shambling corpses and preventing them from reinforcing the Damsels.

The maid had already escaped containment and Jeb could make out her carrying Casey 3 past the slow corpses, flipping and jumping over slow tackles like the Michael Vick Experience.

The keegan Daredevil’s eyes widened as the little old dead lady approached like a freight train, literally slapping the slender alien out of the way with brute force.

That kid needs more Nerve, Jeb thought as he closed in from above, weaving another net of fire. If it worked once, Jeb had no reason to change it up.

Jeb slammed into the ground between the Damsel and the maid, intercepting the undead leader a short ways from Casey 3, his hand held up, and sporting a smug grin spoiled by the blood between his teeth.

Another one in the bag.

Wait.

This isn’t gonna curse me again, is it? Is it gonna blow me up?

Jeb hesitated.

The undead kitri dropped into a slide tackle, and before Jeb could blink, slipped into a channel of softened earth, burrowing under his feet and emerging out of the ground behind him at a dead sprint, not losing an ounce of speed.

Best effort!

Jeb gritted his teeth. If I die, I die. My ‘best effort’ demands nothing less. He swung around, hug-seeking net of white fire launching from the palm of his hand.

All he saw between the lines of fire was Casey the Third being held in front of the undead, the year-old girl red-faced and fussing.

Every instinct at war with his given Word, Jeb grabbed the net of fire with his Myst and wrenched it up over Casey’s head, singeing some of the hairs on the baby’s crown.

“My master will be pleased with this sacrifice,” the rotting kitri intoned.

An eyeblink later, she and the baby plunged into liquid earth like a still pond, vanishing instantly.

 Damnit! DAMNIT!

Jeb’s teeth clenched as he reached into the ground and tore up large segments of earth, flinging them aside as he searched for the undead and his ward, his telekinetic Myst functioning as an excavator big enough to give a modern contractor an erection.

Too little, too late. The undead had a way to swim underground like a goddamn dolphin, and she’d been saving it for the endgame.

…Wait.

Jeb’s ‘best effort’ was now tugging him in a different direction, and it took a moment before he understood what it was, because it ran counter to his policy of not using children as bait.

I can track Casey Jr…

Well, somebody else can with their System Abilities. And if he can figure out where Casey 3 is going, then we can ‘deliver’ an ass whooping and save Casey 3 in the process. ‘Best effort’ approved.

Jeb’s Myst relaxed, dropping the massive chunk of rock onto the cobbled street, shaking the ground beneath his hovering foot.

Speed.

Jeb flew over to where Vresh stood over a pile of quivering, smoldering chunks of burnt flesh. A few smoking feathers were all that indicated it might have once been a kitri.

She was bent over, hacking and spitting like she’d tasted something foul.

“Ugh,” Vresh said. “That was…unique.” She shuddered.

“Death curse?” Jeb asked as he landed next to her.

“Indeed, death curses are typically rare among undead, but Damsels themselves are incredibly rare, more so undead ones. We can expect each of them to have some form of penalty or curse for killing them. Thankfully, we can have them purged by a priestess of the appropriate lev—EEEP!”

Vresh’s words were cut off by a squeal as he looped a strand of telekinetic Myst around her center of gravity.

“We got maybe…fifteen minutes to put in motion a rescue,” Jeb said, budding three more strings of Myst and snagging the three college students off the ground.

“Hey!” Jeresh shouted as he picked her up. Piwaki squawked awkwardly, and Kolusk groaned, clutching his temple.

“I thought she was gonna rip your head off, man,” Piwaki said, a tendril of his Myst emerging from his finger and entering Kolusk’s head. “I’ll take care of the swelling.”

Kolusk’s dazed look cleared a bit as he floated up beside the rest of them.

“Daredevils get a huge passive resistance to blunt force trauma from fast-moving objects, or stationary objects while moving fast,” the keegan said, giving them a thumbs-up. “She slapped me just hard enough for it to count. If she’d been any gentler with me, I’d be dead.”

“That’s what he said,” Piwaki said with a soft honk, still busily healing his friend.

“Saved by being stupid and reckless again,” Jeresh said, rolling her eyes. “How many times does this make now?”

Kolusk began counting on his fingers while Jeb tuned them out, aiming for the emperor’s bunker.

He needed to make a phone call.

***Jeb***

“No, that doesn’t sound good,” Jeb said into Borg’s rotting palm, where the mad scientist had put a microphone for some ungodly reason. “What I wanna know is what you think happened.”

“Well, I think there’s a couple possibilities,” Eddie said, his voice emanating from Borg’s unhinged jaw. The two of them were sitting in the middle of Borg’s high-security cell, overlooked by several angry-looking melas.

The emperor wasn’t taking chances with undead again.

“Your total Myst passed above three times your Body, which may have been significant, or perhaps simply the Myst solely generated by the nuke crossed some other threshold we’re not aware of. Either way…”

“I’m in trouble if it happens again.”

“Indeed. You’re actually lucky that curse took everything down evenly. If you hadn’t gotten those levels, or it had only taken down Body…”

I’d be screwed, Jeb thought.

“There is one good thing I noticed that leads me to believe it’s hinged on your total Myst and not simply the amount that’s been growing like a tumor.”

“What’s that?”

“Your stats, governed by the System, are able to ward off the explosion. I believe if the two were entirely separate, then raising your Body in that critical moment wouldn’t have done anything. I figure if you raise your Body some more, you can buy some more time.”

“Thanks, I already figured that ou—”

Jeb paused. He had only been putting levels into raising his Body. He hadn’t been making Deals, i.e. scamming people out of lots of material wealth to keep his Body stat afloat.

I don’t have time for that, damnit! Jeb was on his Best Effort to kill the undead, and he could already feel the compulsion to drop this conversation for something more productive.

There is one thing I could try.

“Eddie, give me everything you own in exchange for me saying something nice about you. Deal?”

“What?” Eddie’s voice raised an octave.

“Don’t worry, I’ll lease it back to you.”

“Oh. OOOH.” Eddie’s voice flooded with understanding. “Okay, Deal.”

“Eddie, you’re the best human scientist working on Myst-based technology I’ve ever met.”

“Aww.”

“And I’ll expect three bulbs every month from you for staying in my lab and using my tools. You know I can enforce that.”

“Shit.”

Eddie’s defeated tone filled him with a tingling sensation of a Deal well done.

Error. Recalculating Body. 47 à 49

Jeb made a mental note to sell Eddie’s lab back to him for fair market value so he didn’t lose the Impact of its value.

“You’re a good friend for doing that, Eddie. Now I gotta go see the emperor about a girl. The metaphorical clock is ticking.”

“Later, Jeb. I would wish you luck, but if you die I don’t have to pay you extortion money for my own stuff, sooo…”

“Understood,” Jeb said, pressing the hang-up button under Borg’s rib.

The phone call bought him a little bit of a safety buffer. Not much, but enough to satisfy his ‘best effort’ condition.

Goddamn, I’m never making a promise like that again.

“So,” Borg said, his jaw snapping back into place to cover the speaker in his mouth. “When are they gonna let me outta here?” he asked.

“Umm….” Jeb’s eyes drifted to the guards, who shook their heads with slow, deliberate menace.

“Probably not soon, huh?” Borg asked.

“I’ll ask,” Jeb said. He certainly wouldn’t give it his best effort, though.

“It’s fine. In fifteen hours, thirty-six minutes and twelve seconds, I’ll subdue the guards and escape before finding you.”

“No killing,” Jeb said, holding up a finger. “That’s an order.”

“I thought you’d say that. It will be nonlethal.”

“Also, they can hear you.” Jeb pointed over his shoulder at the guards, who looked ready to throw down, having heard Borg’s escape itinerary.

“So?” Borg looked genuinely confused.

“Well, I’m out,” Jeb said, clapping his hands and making a ‘I wash my hands of this’ motion. The guards still frisked him on the way out, both physically and magically.

Internally Jeb was screaming at the delay, but on the outside he played it cool.

Letting TSA know you were impatient was the surest way to get them to dick with you.

Back when they existed, I suppose.

It wasn’t too long before Jeb made it back to the emperor, still sitting on his throne, looking a bit more exhausted than before, even.

“Jebediah Trapper, I hear you’ve already put two of my former brides down.”

“They were a lot older than you, weren’t they?” Jeb wondered aloud.

“It was a political position.” Pikaku gave a tired shrug. “Now, you sent word that you’d like to use a Class that tracks people down. Undead cannot be reliably tracked using System-based Abilities. The curse of undeath exists outside the bounds of that framework.”

“Right, but the undead took a hostage about…” Jeb consulted his watch and hissed. “Eighteen minutes ago. The hostage isn’t an undead and probably won’t be for some time. We can track her.”

“What makes you think they didn’t simply eat your hostage the moment you dropped your pursuit?”

“Because it was Casey the Third,” Jeb said, watching the emperor’s shoulders stiffen. “They’re going to want to feed her to their master.”

“You’re right. And if their master no longer lairs in Mestikos, then we may be able to catch them in time.”

“Exactly,” Jeb said.

“I will give you access to one of the empire’s most decorated heroes.”

Ooh, sounds good.

“A man of integrity and will, who has put himself at the disposal of the empire and has personally rescued dozens upon dozens of our citizens, ranging from everyday farmers, to political prisoners and even enforcers lost in the Death Wilds. If Casey the Third is still alive, he can find her. And fast.”

Jeb’s heart was starting to rattle hard against his ribcage. This was exactly what he needed.

An implosion of silver Myst surrounded the emperor as he spoke.

“Kol Rejan.”

Wait a minute.

The large double doors in the room creaked open as the assassin who’d tried really hard to kill him the year before wandered through the door in his underclothes, looking a bit confused.

“That’s odd, this is supposed to be my closet, and—You!“ His entire body froze when he spotted Jeb, his hand reaching for a concealed weapon until he spotted the emperor behind him.

“Do you two know each other?” Emperor Pikaku asked.

Jeb, unable to lie, fielded the question very carefully.

“Yes, we’ve worked together before. I’ll let Kol go into the details for your emperorship.”

Kol, reading the situation in a fraction of a second, plastered a fake keegan smile on his skeletal face. “Yes, Jeb and I have met. Forgive my aggressive stance; the transition between here and there was disorienting.”

The two stood there, fake-smiling at each other to the best of their abilities.

“So…hero of the empire… You never told me about that. Seems pretty prestigious. Sounds like you’re a great person. Very law-abiding.”

Subtext: Behave or I’ll spill everything about your moonlighting to the emperor.

Kol’s eyebrow twitched. “I’m not so great. I simply use what my Class gave me to better our country,” Kol said, waving a hand to encompass the empire.

“Enough pleasantries,” the emperor said, accepting some stationary from a servant and jotting a quick note on it. “We don’t have a spare second. Kol, you will deliver this to Casey Thompson the Third, and retrieve her. You will be paid five times your usual fee upon delivery of the child.”

He oriented on Jeb. “Jeb, your task will be to kill any of your targets that are with her. Especially if it’s your primary target.”

“Understood,” Kol and Jeb said simultaneously, glancing askance at each other.

“Go.” The emperor pointed at the door with a claw, but the two were already moving.

Jeb wanted to ask why the emperor didn’t simply Summon Casey 3, but he already knew why.

Because then they would lose their shot at finding his father’s hiding spot.

Chapter 23: Spell List

This guy’s like a bad penny, Jeb thought, eyeballing the well-dressed keegan who’d tried to kill him off and on over the last year. Sometimes for hire, sometimes out of principle.

“Alright, let’s get this over with so we can never see each other again and I can get paid,” Kol said, holding up the letter and closing his eyes.

The skeletal figure’s brows furrowed for a moment before he opened them and pointed out toward the southwest.

“She’s that way.”

“How accurate is that?” Jeb asked.

“The Ability is more accurate the more accurate the address written on the letter is,” the Courier responded, holding up the paper so Jeb could see it.

Casey Thompson the Third – De’naan Continent.

“That’s not a very accurate address, for our purposes.”

“I’ll be up to about fifteen degrees off in either direction,” Kol said, making a wedge shape with his hands in the direction he’d pointed, indicating his margin of error.

“As we get closer, a fifteen-degree margin of error means less and less. I’ve tracked down plenty of people with the Continent header. It’s better than having the address be completely wrong.”

Jeb stopped and took stock of the situation as it rapidly spiraled out of control.

His main problem—either exploding or turning into a pile of radioactive sludge—was rapidly approaching, and he was stuck putting bandaids on a leaky dam.

Sooner or later, it just wasn’t going to be enough.

Jeb had no idea how long he had left to live, either. Could be hours, could be days.

The problem was, help from the emperor would most certainly take more than a few days to manifest itself.

He was already screwed and locked into a Deal that forced him to spend his time tracking down thirteen—actually, eleven now—utterly nasty creatures that cursed whoever managed to kill them, instead of finding a way to save his ass.

Not to mention the problem of Mab that he’d put on the back burner.

Her entire generation was about to bite the dust and turn into weird cancer-monsters.

Honestly, I’m not so sure that’s a major problem.

Sure, it was a heartless thought, but Jeb hadn’t done it to them, and they were ancient. Jeb wasn’t gonna cry over spilt millenigenarians.

Except for the possibility of thousands of extremely powerful cancer-monsters rampaging out of the Dead Wilds all at once.

Jeb pressed a hand to his temple, but the headache didn’t go away until a moment later, when he noticed his other hand was in his deep pocket, thumbnail casually slipped under the leading edge of the ominous blue scroll in his pocket. It felt as though his hand was being drawn magnetically toward the destructive artifact.

Jeb flinched his hand out of his pocket like he’d touched a hot stove.

Why do I even still have this? It’s obviously evil.

Just as obviously messing with his head, too. Still, Jeb couldn’t convince himself to throw it away.

“Something wrong?” Kol asked, taking in Jeb’s sudden jolt. “Human facial expressions are disgusting, and I don’t care to learn them.”

“I’d like my Jeep, a pen and paper,” Jeb said, steadying his breathing, “and a high-ranking priest to un-curse me.”

“Didn’t the emperor say we didn’t have seconds to waste? I distinctly remember that you can fly—carrying others, if necessary.”

“There’s haste, and there’s being hasty. I need to prepare,” Jeb said. “Priest. Now.”

******

Traps:

Finger-gun clips: ‘ack’ X10 þ ‘pip’x10 þ ‘kip’ X10 þ  ‘Alpha Strike’ ☠ý

Full auto: ‘Juggernaut’ ý ‘Mark of Cain’ þ ‘little friend’ (foot) ý

Shield: x4 ý

Looped Armor: head ý torso þ legs ý upper arms þ lower arms þ

*Amended to veins and major organs after the shaving incident*

FMO shield x50 þ

Safety Phrases: restraints ‘3RW’ þ ‘Plitskin’ þ ‘Room full of Charlies’ (x2 alt winks)☠ý

Grenades ‘go boom’: pants ý shoe ý ring ý

Aerial Bomb x10 þ

Grenades ‘go boom’ ý

Health: Internal bleeding þ external bleeding þ

‘too tight’: Collar þ wrists þ fingers þ arms þ chest þ head þ legs þ ankle þ feet þ

‘21 buck salute’ þ

Things ‘love daddy’: clothes þ saw ý staff ý leg ý

Jeb tapped his pen against the paper, scratching out the occasional obsolete entry as he studied his list of ‘traps’.

Ever since he got his Class in the tutorial, he’d been able to rig up simple spells to go off on command, exploiting the Ability the Mystic Trapsmith Class came with.

It had served him well. Now, though, his list was beginning to look a little lackluster.

Jeb had advanced enough to create complex logic for his traps’ behavior, discovered how to alter his Myst to other kinds, and figured out how to make semi-permanent effects.

I need to create something a bit more nuanced. More suited to my situation.

A thought occurred to him, and Jeb’s eyes widened.

Even if he lost Myst, Nerve and Body every time he killed one of those undead vultures, that would have no effect on any of the traps he had already concocted at full power.

It could be a great way to save a wild card for the last boss, Jeb thought, thumbing his chin as he pondered how to kill Pikaku’s dad, who was presumably stronger than any of his undead Damsels.

And Jeb would be greatly diminished, if not dead, by the time they fought.

Jeb was starting to get a feel for the extra dimensions of spellcasting.

It was both art and science, a mix of total exactness and intuition.

That was something that Eddie didn’t quite get, why he couldn’t figure out a mathematical formula for the ‘relationship’ axis of the four-dimensional spell scale, despite having a good idea of the rest.

That part was intuitive, subjective, and not measurable…and Jeb was getting the hang of it.

So, how can I upgrade my arsenal? A lot of the traps are holdovers from half a year ago and need to be updated to my current Myst potency. Not to mention the ‘pip’ single-fire shots are almost useless at this point and need to be replaced with something more powerful as well. I didn’t use them at all in the last fight. Didn’t need to waste the breath on a single shot when I can mentally backhand people with a lot more force.

I’m thinking some kind of self-sustaining attack spell that tracks and/or harries the target?

To that end, Jeb began creating an imaginary woodsman friend named Raymond who was protective of Jeb. The man was talented at tracking and surviving the harshest of conditions, yet not unfamiliar with the urban jungle as well. Self-sustaining. Driven. Accurate. This would be the ‘relationship’ that would dictate the behavior of the spell.

Then he needed to apply the exact frequencies of Myst that would dictate the flavor of energy the Myst would be, create the seven loops of Myst that resonated against the primary channel, changing it from telekinetic to heat-based.

This is gonna be kickass, Jeb thought as he slowly teased strands of Myst into a new spell…

“Sorry about that priest,” Vresh said from beside him, her arm hanging out the window of the jostling Jeep.

“N’gah?” Jeb grunted, dragged out of his intense focus by the lovely melas woman’s voice.

Suddenly Jeb was aware of the jostling of the Jeep, the wind from the open top—cut off to accommodate the taller aliens and those with horns—even the gritty sand along the passenger armrest digging into his skin.

And the heat of the woman sitting beside him in the bench seat.

Honestly, the seating arrangement in the cramped vehicle was half the reason they had decided to let Kolusk drive. The other half was that the Daredevil’s passives applied to vehicles he was driving, too.

And honestly, driving a car isn’t that hard.

The tires flew over a root, and if Jeb hadn’t been wearing his seatbelt, he might’ve been ejected from his seat to tumble in the rough terrain behind them.

“This is so much better than a carriage!” Kolusk shouted with glee as they barrelled through terrain no rational person would consider.

“A little to the left,” Kol said, holding the letter in one hand and pointing with the other.

They were going an absolutely insane fifty miles an hour while off-roading, which had to have been some combination of foolhardiness and System assistance from Kolusk’s Daredevil Class.

Despite all that, Jeb’s Body and Nerve were high enough to ignore everything. The bumps, shouts of glee, the incessant whining of Piwaki.

But not Vresh talking to him.

He filtered out the distractions and re-oriented on what she had said.

Sorry about the priest? Ah.

“Don’t worry about it, I was half expecting that response,” Jeb said, looking up into her yellow-green eyes.

The way the priest had explained it to him was this:

The priest doesn’t actually do the removing of a curse on your Impact. The gods do. They do this to incentivize the slaying of undead, who are a blight on the System, actively corroding it with their own form of communicable Impact disease.

Like conflicting viruses.

The priest’s role in all that is to contact the deity and inform them that so-and-so needs a cleanse, and the deity then removes the curse pro bono, as a reward for the good work of slaying the undead.

Things get a little more tricky when you’re at odds with the gods themselves.

Jeb’s free cleansing for services rendered was replaced with what amounted to a divine raspberry and a rude gesture.

‘We would be happy to remove this affliction as well as any others when Jebediah Trapper has fulfilled his duty to us.’

Duty? DUTY?

That word pissed him off more than the refusal itself.

Jeb didn’t owe them shit. It was just extortion, like he’d done to Eddie. They’d done nothing that earned his ‘duty’, instead acting entitled to it by his mere existence. Thank you sooo much for not killing me when I beat the Impossible Tutorial! How can I ever repay you!?

Still, Jeb had been in the army for long enough to get used to assholes and disappointment strong enough to cause you to taste blood.

The gods were actually a seven out of ten on the asshole scale.

Nate Silverman still held the prestigious honor of being the worst asshole Jeb had ever had as a CO.

Jeb looked deep into Vresh’s eyes and condensed the long train of thought into a single sentence.

“I’ll get over it.”

Vresh smirked and relaxed back into the seat. “You seem less disappointed than I’d thought you would be.”

“Eh, it’s life,” Jeb said with a shrug, attempting to keep his gaze on her face as the Jeep bounced. “I think crushing disappointment as a child really prepared me for the real world.”

“I can hardly imagine you as a child.”

“About the same, but smaller,” Jeb said. “I’ve made comparatively little personal growth over my lifetime.”

“And the beard?” Vresh asked with a twinkle of amusement.

“I’d like to say it was there when I was young too, but sadly…”

Vresh chuckled. “I know what you mean. My childhood was mostly good, but there were a few instances that…” Vresh trailed off and winced, seemingly stumbling across a painful memory.

Yeah, I know that look, Jeb thought. That was the face made when touching those flashbulb memories that hurt even to revisit. They could be as stupid as throwing a tantrum when you weren’t allowed to light your own birthday cake, or as eviscerating as the death of a loved one.

There was no way to tell, and Jeb decided to simply leave the topic alone.

“I’ve always been…a bit strange compared to my peers,” Vresh said finally. “I don’t think I’ve ever taken the time to properly introspect.”

“Introspection is good. Too few people do it.”

Jeb’s brow twitched with sudden realization. He’d been too focused on making an awesome spell to really consider whether he needed one or not. Consult the experts.

“What kind of spell do you think would work well against undead?” Jeb asked. “These ones specifically. Is there anything you think I’m missing?”

Vresh shrugged. “Fire works well. There’s nothing wrong with what you’ve been using. It consumes and breaks down the miasma, stopping the animation of the body and the spread of the disease. As for a specific ‘spell’, I don’t think there’s a one-size-fits-all strategy for these undead Damsels. They’ve each got a different Myst power, a different upbringing, and different levels of strength. You can’t expect one spell to destroy all of them.”

Jeb blinked. “That’s a really good point.”

Jeb was looking at this like a modern idiot, trying to find a single gun that was equivalent to the task of taking down all of his targets, then stocking up on a ton of bullets for it and galavanting off to fight them. Jeb had been infected by the creeping, mundane assumption that all bodies and all people are basically on a level playing field and what will kill one will kill another.

Which, for the last thirty-six years of his life, had been one hundred percent correct. You shoot someone in the head, they die. It was no wonder it had been a blind spot.

There was nothing wrong with Jeb’s idea to make a more effective Pip series, and he would probably still give Raymond his time to shine.

But what if he made a unique ‘trap’ or series of traps, each designed to kill a specific target, counter their Abilities and destroy them? That would work far better than a one-size-fits-all, and there was nothing stopping him from doing it.

Jeb shelved his Pip trigger redesign and turned to more fully take in the former enforcer sitting next to him.

“What do you know about each of the women in the emperor’s harem?” Jeb asked.

Vresh, being a noble herself, was expected to know these things. With Nerve beyond the physical limitations of mere flesh and blood, she was able to recite with startling accuracy the Myst power and estimated Attributes of each of the undead Damsels.

Jeb prodded for more information as they drove, asking about their relationships, personalities, tactics they favored—everything he could think of to personalize each individual undead’s ‘care package’.

In the process, Jeb flipped his sheet of paper over and began writing down the remaining targets’ names, underlining them as a heading, then penciling in their potential weaknesses below each.

Damn, I wish I’d thought of this five hours ago.

To be fair, Jeb had been prodded into ‘go, go, go!’ mode by his Deal with the emperor, and that had put blinders onto things like introspection and deep thought.

Next time we meet, I’m going to be a hell of a lot more prepared, Jeb thought, his brow furrowed as he began making notes for each of his eleven ‘custom’ death spells.

Kikipuki can shrink and fling herself about at insane speeds. I need something fast and accurate to nail her down. She also was a very jealous lover. I wonder if I can use the ‘relationship’ to make her more attracted to the spell itself—working in reverse from the ‘wants hugs’ relationship. If it’s the willing target of her jealousy, then she could accidentally slip into the spell, basically spoofing her Impact into doing the homing work for the spell…

***Piwaki***

Piwaki craned his neck to take in the human mumbling to himself, staring down at his piece of paper and jotting down notes, completely unaware of the world around them, or the close call with a low-hanging tree branch that whizzed by his scalp, nearly decapitating him.

“That’s an absurd amount of focus. You know that’s gotta be some kind of mental imbalance, right?”

The melas enforcer looking down at Jeb shrugged. “I think it’s cute.”

******

***2 hours of jostling later***

“Okay, I’ve got a spell that I’m pretty sure will kill each and every single one of them,” Jeb said. “Of course, the likelihood is that we won’t get one hundred percent kill rate, so your job is to mop up the stragglers,” Jeb said, double-checking that he had reached the bottom of his to-do list.

“My job is to retrieve the child, and nothing else,” Kol said from the front passenger seat.

“I’m not sure I have anything to offer, really,” Piwaki said from the other side of the bench.

Jeb glanced over at the oversized bird valet. “What is he doing here, anyway?”

“Vresh busted into our dorm and said she needed someone to drive a ‘car’, so naturally I had to come,” Kolusk shouted from the front before narrowly avoiding a ditch that would have gotten them stuck.

“I couldn’t miss the opportunity to gain levels and get experience with how a real enforcer works,” Jeresh said from behind Vresh. “It’s always been my dream to study under one.”

Piwaki snorted, shaking his head on his long neck.

“Yeah, but what is he doing here?” Jeb asked, pointing at the cosmetic surgeon-to-be.

“My ‘friends’ dragged me along,” Piwaki said with a sigh.

“Every battle needs pawns.” Vresh shrugged.

“Did you just refer to me as a pawn!?” Piwaki demanded. “I’m the emperor’s nephew! You can’t just—”

“If you don’t wanna be a pawn, don’t be a pawn,” Vresh said, giving the bird an icy stare.

“That’s-that’s fair,” Piwaki said, settling back into his seat.

“Alright Kolusk, I know you’ve had a great time,” Jeb said, “but it’s time for me to take it from here.”

“Aww…man,” Kolusk sulked, but only for a moment. The delight returned to his face as the Jeep rose into the air, buoyed by Jeb’s Myst.

“You guys ready for some real speed?” Jeb asked. Up until now, they’d been barely keeping pace with the fleeing undead, who had a half-hour head start, but now it was time to fly.

Chapter 24: Strike Two

Jeb’s ears rang.

The wind whistled past his ears, clawing at his eyes every time he tried to open them.

His skin hurt all over. He could feel the wetness of warm blood oozing into the space between his fingers, the inside of his ears.

Jeb pried his eyes open against the wind, taking in his situation.

He was falling among scattered smoking bits of a Jeep.

My Jeep, Jeb thought as his brain finally caught up with the order of events. Above, beside and below him was a smorgasbord of bits of burning, shredded metal and plastic that used to be Jeb’s faithful off-road vehicle.

Among the falling debris were Vresh and Kolusk, who looked surprisingly cognizant and unharmed. Piwaki was unconscious, his expensive clothes ballooning up around him and slowing his fall. How much of that was magic and how much was wind, Jeb couldn’t say with a glance.

Beyond and slightly hidden behind the others, Jeb spotted Jeresh and Kol. The thirsty young woman and the professional assassin looked…not great.

What’s the last thing I remember?

A flash of light from below us.

Contrary to popular belief, multiplying a man’s reaction speed by five does not allow them to dodge bullets…or in this case, artillery fire.

He’d felt a brief tightening of Vresh’s grip on his shoulder, maybe heard a syllable, then nothing.

It would’ve had to have been something big, because a handheld RPG would most likely have been stopped by the Jeep’s onboard defensive traps.

Big enough to punch a hole through Jeb’s shields, but the shrapnel wasn’t enough to kill him.

I think I got lucky. Even with his shields, if the shell had decided to pass through his seat, Jeb would have simply ceased to exist.

It kinda looks like the shell got the engine block, based on the type and variety of bits falling along with me. That, and none of the team has been turned into a fine red mist.

Vresh might have been able to tank an artillery shell, but it wasn’t the sort of thing you wanted to test.

Beneath them, the ground rapidly approached, a clearing filled with a multi-species band of obvious mercenaries—or perhaps pirates—with heavy weapons strapped to their backs and thick, Classer-slaying swords on their belts.

Well, these guys came prepared.

There was no chance they had pointed their heavy artillery at the sky and simply waited for a flying Jeep to pass by. They’d obviously been hired, or perhaps prompted to shoot Jeb et al. out of the sky.

It’s a goddamn setup.

Of course the emperor is gonna send some of his best people after the baby when it gets kidnapped.

The thing that took Jeb aback was the undead’s ability to hire and coordinate an ambush by disposables in such a short amount of time. This had to have begun before Casey 3 had even been kidnapped.

Even if Jeb won, it had cost the former emperor nothing in terms of valuable personnel, and Jeb could tell that at the very least, Jeresh was down for the count.

Have we just been dancing in the palm of this guy’s hand the entire time?

All these thoughts flashed through Jeb’s mind in about a second after he opened his eyes.

Jeb gritted his teeth and split off five strands of telekinetic Myst, grabbing each of his companions around the waist and slowing their descent.

Vresh flagged Jeb down and shook her head, pointing at herself and Kolusk, then down at the ground.

Jeb couldn’t hear her over the wind and the damaged eardrums, but he understood what she wanted.

With a mental grunt of effort, Jeb flung the two close combat fighters straight down, increasing their speed from terminal velocity to ‘oh my god!’ velocity.

Vresh landed on a guy’s shoulders and violently snapped him in half, while Kolusk’s impact formed a crater in the earth, which he proceeded to crawl out of, laughing his boney ass off, completely unharmed and ready to throw down.

While they distracted their ambushers, Jeb turned his attention back to the wounded members of the group.

He gently ran his fingers through Piwaki’s feathers, checking for hidden blood or evidence of a broken neck.

Jeb didn’t find any, so he slapped the bird right in the beak.

Piwaki honked in surprise, his eyes snapping open. He began to flail wildly as he noticed their distance above the ground.

“We’re fallin—”

Jeb slapped him again.

“We’re not falling, I have you!” Jeb pointed toward Kol and Jeresh, whose clothes were soaked in an alarming amount of blood. “Heal them! Now!”

“Jeresh!” Piwaki scrambled through the air to his friend, propelling himself almost as much as Jeb did.

The melas regained a bit of her color as a thread of silvery Myst with a tinge of pink entered her body. She gasped as her lungs kicked in automatically, but didn’t wake up.

Kol…well, he always looked like a skeleton, so Jeb wasn’t entirely sure how he was doing, but the rent in his clothes didn’t bode well. Keegan anatomy was strange. They didn’t bleed quite so copiously as humans and melas.

Their blood was concentrated to the thickness of motor oil, and there was only about three pints or so of the dark fluid being pumped around their skeletal frame at any given time.

So when Jeb saw a spot of dark on the keegan’s jacket, he worried.

We might lose track of Casey if he dies, Jeb thought, his concern primarily with the innocent baby and not the amoral butcher.

Jeb created a delicate blade of force and sheared the assassin’s clothes off from collar to pantleg, unwrapping him in a matter of seconds.

The tear in the keegan’s tailored clothes hid a piece of the engine block. A solid shred of high carbon steel from the crankshaft had managed to lodge itself in the assassin’s torso, right around where a human’s kidney would be.

There were half a dozen other blooming bruises where the keegan’s skin must have shrugged off impacts from other engine shrapnel, either too soft or too slow to penetrate the man’s System-enhanced skin.

Still, lots of internal bleeding. That’s not good.

“I’m going to put us down. Make sure they don’t die!”

“O-okay!” Piwaki said, his voice shrill.

Jeb turned his gaze back down beneath them, studying the fight.

Vresh was a whirlwind of death. Her blades vanished and reappeared across the battlefield, slipping into tiny portals long enough to eviscerate her foes before disappearing once again.

Unfortunately, she wasn’t able to do it very often. The enemy had pegged her as a high-level combatant and was assaulting her with everything they could afford to throw at her. Jeb saw her twist out of the way of Myst, blades, and gunfire with inhuman levels of grace and speed.

Okay, so SHE can dodge bullets, as long as she’s not trapped in a floating car. Jeb wondered if she was dodging the bullets out of principle, or to make the other guys look bad, because he was fairly sure lead would simply shatter on impact with her skin.

I suppose I would use depleted uranium as the new lead. Just get some Udium barrels, figure out how to rifle them, then pack maybe three times as many grains into the charge and—focus, Jeb!

…I wonder if I could use the repellant effect of faradan stone to create a sort of stringless crossbow by using wafers stacked on top of each other in a specific way. Something like a magical railgun.

An explosion rocked the clearing as one of the ambushing mercenaries threw what looked like a grenade at Vresh. Sickly red Myst erupted outward just behind a shockwave, lighting everything on fire and spreading the scent of brimstone.

Put a pin in it.

Jeb shook the distraction off and really focused.

Alright. I’m the heavy artillery, and I’m currently being wasted looking after the wounded. Jeb wasn’t complaining. There wasn’t anyone else available who could keep them safe, but not using Jeb in the fight was like running a footrace with one leg. Something that Jeb had copious amounts of experience with.

Jeb found a relatively clear spot and set the three down.

Speaking of my leg… I didn’t like the loaner either, Jeb thought as he pried the uncomfortable, ill-fitting loaner pegleg off his stump.

Ow! Incidentally, the stretching motion alerted him to a bit of shrapnel sticking out of his jeans. It was itchy.

Jeb’s heart slammed hard in his chest three times before he confirmed the bit of steel didn’t come anywhere near the femoral artery and therefore was inconsequential.

Even Jeb’s magical new duds had their limitations, it seemed. Thankfully, he wasn’t nearly as bruised as Kol.

Or maybe you’re so high on adrenaline you can’t feel anything. It was true. The length of steel in his leg was only a bit itchy.

Jeb cocked the thin wooden peg back and flung it toward the oncoming mercenaries, the ill-fitting torture device spinning wildly end over end.

The hardened criminals seemed just a bit confused before Jeb said the magic words.

“Leg go boom!” Jeb shouted as he put up a manual dome around them.

The leg exploded with one of Jeb’s pre-packaged blasts, warding the rush off long enough to buy some breathing room.

“Hey Piwaki,” Jeb said, barely able to speak as he formed a self-sustaining spell. It was a bit like trying to tie a fly fishing knot while people were shooting at you.

“What?”

“You like breathing, right?”

“WHAT!?” the healer honked.

“You’ve got about twenty seconds to wake one of them up and get them in the fight, or you’re going to die. Good luck.”

“Wai—”

Piwaki’s voice was cut off as a three-layer honeycomb shield sprang up around them, held together by a tenuous knot of self-feeding Myst in the center, above the bird’s head.

Jeb placed himself on the outside of the shell. He needed to take the pressure off the combatants.

Jeb caught a glance of Kolusk doing his bit. The Daredevil’s hit-and-run tactics worked much better against living humanoids than against the undead. He truly did move a lot like Jessica did.

From Jeb’s understanding, Jessica changed her mass to zero, then launched herself, then raised it back to normal, creating inertia out of nothing.

Kolusk’s Myst, on the other hand, was all about propelling himself at dangerously high speeds, and he’d chosen the Daredevil Class because its passives mitigated many of the obvious negatives associated with moving at break-neck pace.

In short, Kolusk just liked to go fast.

Jeb made a snap decision, weighing the durability and resistance to heat that Vresh enjoyed relative to the mixed-species mercenaries.

“I’m gonna give you one chance to surrender, and this is it!” Jeb said, using his vocal cords to scatter telekinetic Myst and make the surroundings vibrate in tune with his voice. It was a handy technique when you needed to intimidate someone.

The battle stilled for a moment.

“Kill him!” someone shouted, and it was back on, with at least half a dozen rounds of hot lead shattering on the shield that snapped into place in front of his outstretched palm.

Jeb eyeballed Kolusk’s zipping around the battlefield, waiting a fraction of a second until the Daredevil was behind cover.

“BURN!”

Jeb, trying not to fry himself, repeated the technique he’d looted off a mutated corpse a couple months back. This time, with a bit of an artful flourish. Jeb converted the Myst from kinetic to thermal, but didn’t release it to burn, instead allowing his vocal cords to scatter the Myst along soundwaves, blanketing the battlefield evenly.

In short, anything that could hear Jeb, and wasn’t directly behind a shield of some sort, caught fire.

You have gained a level!

Wails of agony erupted across the battlefield as every piece of brush, every exposed piece of bark, clothing and skin, was immediately subjected to thousands of degrees of intense heat over a short period of time, scalding skin and igniting dry tinder.

Dozens of the weaker assailants rolled on the ground, trying to soothe their burns, while Vresh took advantage of the confusion, turning her attention towards the more powerful enemies and battering them onto their back foot. The ex-enforcer looked none the worse for wear, although her clothes appeared to be a bit singed.

Kolusk emerged from behind the rock and skidded to a halt, confusion evident on his face as the entire battlefield had been transformed into a hellscape in a matter of seconds while his view had been blocked.

Jeb wasn’t able to savor the chaos for long, as a blistering hail of gunfire came down directly on top of him, forcing him to relocate before his FMO shields got used up.

Jeb ducked behind a rock and manually made an egg of force around himself as he ducked his head out to survey the situation more carefully.

The distribution of bad guys was about six percent kitri, twelve percent human, thirty percent keegan, forty percent melas, and a handful of under-represented species.

The humans were the primary gun-toters, of course, and many of them seemed to have Myst Abilities that allowed them to either create bullets from scratch or increase their penetration.

Jeb even noticed a few firearms that sported a hand-crafted look to them, some even with a bluish tint, implying some amount of Udium or faradan stone incorporated into the design.

Oh, neat.

It was always cool to see human ingenuity marching forward. It gave him a warm, fuzzy feeling inside when people adapted to the worst the world had to offer, an—

Vresh winced as a bullet tore through her side.

Jeb marked them for death.

“Pip one. Pip two, pip three.” Jeb dropped the shield and pointed at three of the most suspicious gun-wielders.

Raymond got his chance to shine.

The spell took the form of a double helix of blinding white energy that constantly spun, looped back and fed back into itself in a hypnotic, spinning dance.

Well, if someone could keep their eyes open when they looked at it.

It was about the size of a shotgun shell, so unless someone was wearing a welding mask, they wouldn’t be able to observe it as anything but a blinding streak of light.

The shell-sized streak of light homed in on its target, orienting on the center, then accelerating through their torso.

The three men stood there with eyes and mouths wide as the spell passed through them, burning a charred hole through their bodies.

Then the spell turned around and came back, punching a hole through the target’s back.

Rinse and repeat.

You have gained a level!

You have gained a level!

You have gained a level!

Jeb sucked in a breath between his teeth as the targets slumped over while Raymond continued to drive in and out of the mutilated bodies with mechanical regularity, like a sewing machine.

That’s gotta be some kind of war crime. It took twenty seconds before the spells blinked out of existence. In battle that was a long-ass time, longer than Jeb could afford to sit there and stare at it like a dumbass.

Well, upgrading ‘pip one’ was a success, Jeb thought, ducking back behind the rock while Raymond continued to desecrate corpses.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

Jeb let out a cry as a bullet popped all his remaining FMO shields and caught him in the back, emerging from his torso and driving itself into the earth in front of him. Jeb was catapulted forward and slid through the blood-slick mud.

He managed to get a glance behind him and spotted the boulder he’d been hiding behind. It had three glowing holes in it, one lining up with his brand-new wound.

So many times, Jeb’s common sense had been proven dangerously wrong; a bigass boulder being decent cover, for example.

Jeb’s internal and external bleeding triggers went off, putting up rough telekinetic patches inside and outside his body, keeping blood loss to a minimum.

At least it wasn’t your head or your liver, Jeb thought, picking himself up with Myst and relocating. But we’re on the clock, now.

The patches were never meant to be a permanent solution, and Jeb had outstanding familiarity with the severity of gunshot wounds, and his looked…

Jeb glanced down and lined up the grotesque exit wound with his mental map of internal organs.

Yeah, that’s not a great spot, he thought, but there are no great spots to get shot. At least it’s not a death sentence.

Just keep fighting and worry about it later.

Jeb hated to admit it, but Piwaki the plastic surgeon had suddenly become a VIP.

Jeb swooped back towards Piwaki to check how the healer was doing. He could no longer afford to let him get killed.

The spoiled young man had outperformed Jeb’s expectations, and Jeb was shocked to see both Jeresh and Kol on their feet, warding off attackers with grim determination.

Wait a minute, they’re not fully healed.

Jeresh looked okay, but Kol was still naked, with a crankshaft in his stomach.

Wait, he did say he can only affect minor moods…uppers and downers… So…did he basically give them the equivalent of an adrenaline shot?

“AAAAH!” Kol had bloody froth at the corner of his mouth as he leapt on a swordsman, knocking the blade out of the way and plunging his own through his enemy’s heart. Jeb wasn’t even sure where he got that sword.

Wait, no, that blood on his face is someone else’s. Keegan blood is a different color. He totally bit somebody.

Yep, Piwaki definitely hit them with a thousand tons of wake-up juice.

Jeb hadn’t really specified how he wanted Piwaki to get the others back into the fight. The kid had figured it out on his own, and done what he had to do to survive. Jeb felt a swirl of pride right next to the burning agony in his torso.

I’m such a good mentor.

“Hey!” Jeb shouted, swooping in towards them, keeping his flight pattern unpredictable. The last thing he needed was to eat another bullet.

Or an arrow, Jeb thought as one of the missiles whizzed past his ear.

Jeb pointed towards a section of the battlefield where the formation surrounding them was weakest.

The encirclement had an amoeba-like quality, and one particular edge was closer than the other. If they could reach it, then smash it, all opposing fire would be coming from the other side, allowing them to establish an actual battle line instead of taking fire from every direction.

“That way!”

“What!?” Piwaki shouted back at him, while Kol just looked feral, ignoring Jeb completely. Jeresh seemed to understand, but the other two were too out of it to understand what Jeb wanted.

Battlefield miscommunication got more people killed than any other factor in war. You gotta be exceedingly clear and easy to understand. To that end…

Jeb decided to take matters into his own hands, roping the three of them with his telekinetic Myst and flinging them in the direction he needed them to go.

Good enough, Jeb thought as they flailed through the air to the east.

Jeb juked out of the way of some more fire.

“Vresh, Kolusk. Regroup!” Jeb shouted, making the ground itself vibrate with the sound of his voice before launching himself after the flying members of the team, softening their landings.

The last thing he needed was for one of them to aggravate their wounds and die of shock.

Jeb smashed down and shoved the nearby enemies to the west, making sure none of them were still behind them before tearing a quick chunk of earth out of the ground, ducking them under the blistering hail of gunfire.

A moment later, Vresh arrived covering Kolusk, the two of them breathing heavily, clothes shredded and spotted with blood from close calls with both guns and blades.

“Any idea why they haven’t run away yet?” Jeb asked as the last of the team slid into Jeb’s hastily dug trench.

Hopefully it would work better than a big rock.

“No idea,” Vresh said, shaking her head as she panted. “Pirates and mercenaries do not stick around for fair fights, let alone losing ones.”

“Are we winning?” Jeb asked, glancing out into the wilderness, marking at least fifty humanoids creeping towards them from the west. Fifty he could see. There were probably a lot more hiding in every crevice.

Vresh scanned their team. Not a single one of them wasn’t wounded in some form or another. Her gaze lingered on the bloody hole in Jeb’s torso.

“Eh.” She shrugged. “We’re definitely giving better than we’re getting.”

Jeb used the lull in the fighting to assign all his new levels into Body. It served the dual purpose of making his wound more immediately survivable, and creating a buffer for his next undead take-down.

Body 49 à 53

A faint ache spread through Jeb’s body as the assigned points of Body took hold.

You are now level 49!

Jeb peeked above the lip of the trench and studied the opponents.

It was going to be a slog to win. Especially because something seemed to be boosting their morale to suicidal levels.

Jeb’s eyes widened as he made the connection.

Ah. Piyiki Keiwa, dead harem lady number 7, a bubbly, kind soul, whose Myst was capable of inspiring armies to great feats.

She probably wasn’t so bubbly or kind anymore, but her Myst was likely the same, or similar. It would explain why these guys kept pushing when Jeb’s team had killed at least a quarter of them in about ninety seconds.

That meant dead lady number seven was probably nearby somewhere, waiting with a group of elites for the pawns to wear Jeb and Vresh down.

Jeb touched his bloody wound with a wince.

It’s not gonna take much longer for that to happen, either, Jeb thought. His internal bleeding patch couldn’t possibly be perfect, and everyone else looked more or less in the same boat.

“Well, might as well get this slog over with. I wanna meet this lady,” Jeb muttered, eyes narrowed. And re-kill her.

Jeb took a deep breath and went about the business of taking out the rest of their ambushers.

“Vresh, Kolusk, use your speed to harry the flanks; I’ll drop blasts in the center. Piwaki, continue healing the other two, and see what you can do about my internal bleeding. We’ll try to buy you time to get us into a better condition.

“You two,” Jeb said, pointing at the wounded teammates. “Rest for now, but if someone gets to the trench, fight like your life depends on it. For obvious reasons.”

They nodded.

“Alright, let’s do this.”

***Twenty minutes later***

Jeb was slumped against a rock, tasting blood with every breath. His head was swimming from blood loss, and he couldn’t lift his arms, not even with Myst.

Piwaki was lying in the trench, missing a large portion of his upper arm, his eyes flickering back and forth in pain-induced shock.

Kolusk was missing.

Jeresh was sharing the trench with Piwaki, their roles reversed as she desperately tried to stop the healer’s bleeding.

Vresh was leaning up against Jeb, her body sporting several bullet holes.

God knew where Kol was. Probably being an evil bastard somewhere.

Surrounding them were over a hundred corpses in various states of destruction, from burning holes to caved-in skulls and bloody chunks of flesh.

Jeb’s ‘pip’ series was empty, along with most of the rest of his offensive and defensive spells. The only ones he had left were the ‘room full of charlies’ triggers, which were inappropriate for the situation. He didn’t want to kill the rest of his team, after all.

Jeb’s Myst Core itself was actually dry, gradually refilling from the height of the battle, when Jeb nearly went supernova trying to stamp out the last of those persistent bastards.

Clap!

Clap!

Clap!

“God save us from people who feel the need to slow clap,” Jeb groaned, turning his head to the south to study the approaching group.

Vresh chuckled against his shoulder before hissing in pain.

Six figures approached from the woods to the south, completely free of mud and blood. Totally fresh and ready to fight.

They also looked tough as hell, bearing fancy weapons, and the scars of numerous previous battles. Previous battles meant extra levels, more strength stacked on top of more experience. In short, these men were far more dangerous than those they’d been fighting.

“You really exceeded my expectations.” The rotting kitri at the center of the formation spoke, surveying them with an arrogant superiority. “My master said Pikaku would send his best after the child, but I honestly thought th—”

Jeb angled his right finger towards the undead kitri.

“Boop.”

Chapter 25: Recipe for Destruction

*Jeb’s notes*

Piyiki Keiwa: Dead harem lady number 7, a bubbly, kind soul, whose Myst was capable of inspiring armies to great feats.

Inspired armies = Myst has performance-enhancing properties. Will Not Be Alone.

Death spell will require ability to deal with multiple opponents and penetrate their defenses. Scattershot, homing or penetration?

Add ‘interference rounds’ to clear a path and a ‘conductor’ for them to orient around. Relationship = Football players?

Age: 28 years. Second-youngest harem member. A bit more rash? Young does not guarantee recklessness, only inexperience.

Tactics: Piyiki Keiwa spent most of her combat history leading from the back, as she was far too valuable to risk in combat.

Classically trained swordsman, although never got a chance to use it in a real one-on-one battle before she died.

Young + Never used training in battle = weak to lowbrow, underhanded/unfair or ‘cheating’. I don’t know how a spell can ‘cheat’. Move that consideration to the Spell’s personality? Underhanded veteran? So…me?

Football players or special forces? All I need is the interference rounds to make room for the conductor to ‘score’ on the enemy. In that sense, it’s more like football. On the other hand, special forces have a ton more cutthroat training and ‘unfairness’.

Special forces veterans PLAYING football.

Piyiki was one of the few harem members who actually had a sexual relationship with Pikaku. Can I use that? Jealousy? Unreported, unlike Kikipuki, who was a very jealous lover.

Invert it. Whose jealousy caused damage to her?

Bubbly people internalize their feelings.

Trauma from Kikipuki? Most definitely, her behavior was legendarily bad.

Exploit mental trauma. How?

Vresh mentioned temporary exile based on politics. Never took another lover. Actual love? = Heartbreak?

Probe her Impact for that one instant of heartbreak and betrayal she felt when Pikaku sent her away for no fault of hers. Temp. Stun?

***Jebediah Trapper***

“Boop.”

The tip of Jeb’s finger unleashed hell.

Six kinetic lances dived forward, plowing into the ground, sending a shower of dirt into the air and into the eyes of the opposing group. To their credit, none of the opposing veterans flinched, instead moving to stand in front of their ward, weapons up.

A single bright light surrounded by a horizontal tornado of mixed telekinetic and thermal motes of Myst shot forward, plowing through the curtain of earth in a streak of light.

The Myst orbiting the center light separated in a smooth deployment, attacking the bodyguards from below in order to take advantage of their mass and knock them away from the target.

Four of them were knocked away; having a high Body simply doesn’t make you heavier.

Another two squatted down and used some kind of technique to remain in place. One of them melted their feet into the ground, the other seemed to turn metallic.

The one who fused with the ground got hit through the temple by a mote of light, going limp.

The other was seemingly invulnerable, the high temperature and kinetic lances unable to deter him from aiming for the ‘conductor’ in the middle.

The hulking steel melas let out a bellow as he dove forward, snatching the conductor in the center out of the air and crushing it in his fist in a swirl of Myst.

The tornado of Myst didn’t give a shit. The one in the center wasn’t the conductor.

Half a dozen kinetic blockers slammed the bodyguard to the ground, preventing him from pushing himself to his feet as the formation swept past him, orienting on Piyiki Keiwa.

The undead woman moved to react, when a pulse of ivory light emanated from the formation, causing her to hesitate for an instant.

The moment passed and the undead creature’s legs bunched up, ready to fling herself out of the way.

The six lances that had disappeared into the ground popped up like daisies, wrapping themselves around her ankles and holding her in place.

“Wha—”

The conductor separated from the formation and blinked forward with heretofore unseen speed, expanding into a softball-sized complex knot of Myst, burning a massive hole through Piyiki’s head.

Instead of passing through, the linchpin of the spell took up residence, unfolding and engulfing the undead creature from the head down, turning it to ash in the process.

All the while, the Myst blockers formed a tornado of force and fire around the target, adding to the heat and intercepting several Myst-based attacks from her allies meant to rescue her.

In the space of a sigh, there was nothing left of Piyiki Keiwa.

The opposing veterans climbed to their feet in the deafening silence that followed.

Their eyes cleared, going from raw zealotry to cold calculation as they studied him and the burnt patch of dirt where their patron had been just a moment ago.

Jeb raised his finger, causing the hardened mercenaries to flinch.

“There’s plenty more where that came from,” Jeb said, meeting their eyes from his admittedly un-commanding vantage point, slumped over and bleeding. He neglected to mention that the ‘plenty more’ was entirely intended for specific targets and Jeb couldn’t use it against them if he wanted to.

“Could just wait for you to die,” the oldest one said, looking down at Jeb’s wound. “Your head’s worth a lot of coin.”

“I’m a Mystic Trapsmith,” Jeb said, too tired to shrug. “I took out your client with a ‘boop’. What do you think will happen when I die? Huh?”

The veteran’s eyes widened at Jeb’s baseless assertion.

“Come on. Let’s round up anyone who’s still breathing,” he said, turning away. “We’ll sell the extra weapons from Hognath’s crew to cover our pay. This was a shit show.”

Jeb and Vresh tensed as one of the enemies walked over to them.

“Vresh Tekalis?”

“Yeah?” she asked.

“Big fan of your work, ma’am.” He gave a hesitant half-bow before going back to looting bodies.

Jeb waited until they were out of sight to unleash a long sigh. “Vresh, remind me to make a bluffing trigger based on the phrase ‘plenty more where that came from’, and a death trap.”

Normally, Jeb didn’t care what happened after he died, but if killing him blew everyone up, they might choose not to do it.

Case in point.

“I’m not your secretary,” Vresh muttered, glancing over her shoulder at Piwaki. “Healer’s lucid.”

“Oh, gods, I’m gonna die,” Piwaki moaned in that piteous, overdramatic way that only people who definitely aren’t dying can pull off. “This hurts so bad.”

“That’s actually a really good sign,” Jeb said. “If you were actually going to die, you wouldn’t be able to feel much of anything at all. You would be experiencing this burst of calm euphoria as your brain shut down. So the fact that you’re able to complain so pathetically is actually a good sign.”

“That didn’t make me feel any better,” Piwaki groaned, sitting up, his hand clapped over his shoulder, slowly causing the flesh to grow back together over the bone.

Compared to Amanda’s healing, it was a C minus, but compared to just about anything else Jeb had seen before the world went crazy, the speed was nothing short of miraculous.

“If you’ve got nothing better to do, I’d appreciate it if you made sure Vresh and I don’t bleed out.” Jeb caught Jeresh’s gaze. “You think you can find Kolusk?”

“Probably up a tree somewhere,” Jeresh sighed, climbing to her feet. “I’ll look for him.”

“Where’s Kol?” Vresh asked. “He’s the only one who can find where they stashed the girl.”

“I don’t know. I suspect he might have taken the first opportunity to leave.”

At least, that’s what I would do if I didn’t care about my team or the job.

Kol had a thing about completing his job: a weird hair up his ass about his success rate.

“Actually,” Jeb said, wincing as Piwaki started to close the hole in his stomach, “I think he might have left us with the intention of rescuing the baby in the confusion and leaving us to die.”

“But…Kol Rejan is a national hero,” Piwaki said, confusion evident on his bird-face.

“I’ve met the guy a couple times now, and I would characterize Kol as…a goal-oriented psychopath. His job was not keeping us safe.”

“Huh,” Piwaki muttered, putting his head down and getting back to work as he digested that tidbit of information.

Once Jeb could walk without bleeding out, he found and disabled the nearby artillery, preventing the enemy from knocking them out of the air when they decided to leave. In his travels, he found Kolusk actually stuck in a tree.

The young man had been traveling at near sonic speeds when his Myst guttered out, his momentum embedding him halfway through a grand hardwood tree.

They found Kol a quarter mile to the northwest, as a pale bit of white flesh stood out against the green of the forest.

The naked keegan was stapled to a boulder by a thick steel blade, his eyes clouded over in death.

“Damnit,” Jeb muttered, landing beside the corpse and kneeling down to inspect it.

Kol had been nearly carved in half, held together by the very object pinning him in place. There were obvious signs of a struggle—upturned dirt, toppled trees, and gouges in the stone—but this wasn’t CSI, and Jeb had no idea what, precisely, had happened.

He only knew the end.

“How are we supposed to find the girl now, asshole?” Jeb asked. He didn’t give two shits about the cold-blooded mercenary. What he did care about was that they’d lost their only lead. The corpse didn’t respond.

Jeb had a brief thought of possibly using his ring to try and pry the Ability out of Kol’s head, but realized it was a moot point. One of the first things he’d learned was that a person's Impact dissipates almost instantly upon death.

Under Kol was a creased letter with Casey’s name on it, and dangling from his fingertips was a ripped section of the baby’s clothes. Jeb’s stomach felt like someone had tugged directly on his guts.

Ugh, it smells, Jeb thought, wondering how many of the undead Damsels had been here awaiting the Courier in the follow-up ambush. They tainted the air just by existing.

Jeb blinked.

Miasma. Bad air. Smell. Tainting the air.

“Could that work?” Jeb muttered, his mind jumping from train to train like an action western.

We’ve been dancing on the palm of the Master’s hand this entire time because we’ve been using tactics he’s familiar with. This time, we’re going to force him to react to US.

“I’m going to go talk to Eddie again,” Jeb said, standing.

***1 hour later***

“The term you’re looking for is Astronomical Spectroscopy, a field I know nothing about,” Eddie said through Borg’s speakers. “Am I just ‘the science guy’ to you?” The cranky old roboticist sounded miffed. “Do I just ‘science up’ answers when you need them?”

“You knew the name, so you knew more than me. So just tell me, is it possible to ‘see’ concentrations of molecules with a powerful enough satellite?”

“Well, yeah, if you had a good telescope in orbit, but to reiterate, you don’t have one, and I know next to nothing about it.”

Jeb cocked a brow. “Given that The System has made you many times smarter than you were before, how long would it take you to figure out how to do it?”

Eddie let out a long groan over the phone. “I could probably learn it in an afternoon. I’ll get Ron in on this. I’m gonna need access to some undead to figure out what their stank does to light.”

“Make it faster. Also, where does NASA make their space telescopes?”

“They don’t, for one. They contract out to aerospace companies, same as the Department of Defense,” Eddie said. “Companies like Boeing and Lockheed Martin.”

“…And do you know where I could find one of their labs?”

Eddie sighed over the phone. “Just because I know this doesn’t make me ‘the science guy’, okay?”

Eddie then proceeded to give Jeb the name and location of three U.S.-based companies that might have finished or mostly-finished satellites designed for defense, surveillance and astronomy.

The three were surprisingly similar. Simply a difference in software and a few extra features.

Jeb consulted a map of the new continent, with America shredded to pieces and layered in among the alien geography, mentally reconstructing the fifty states in his head.

Here, here, and here.

“Thanks, Eddie. You do this and I’ll let you off the hook for this month’s lease on your lab,” Jeb said, hanging up on Borg’s phone before the scientist could protest.

“Borg, I want you to come with us. This is an all-hands-on-deck situation,” Jeb said, walking out of the cell.

“It’s a bit early, but that’s fine.” Borg walked out of the cell, the guards falling unconscious as the robot passed by them.

“Do I wanna know how you did that?” Jeb asked.

“Nope,” Borg said with a grin.

“Can you get Smartass out of her cell, too?”

“Well, not easily. I haven’t prepped her guards yet,” Borg responded.

The two of them looked down the empty hall, toward the fairy’s room.

Jeb poked his bullet wound. It was still tender, and if Piwaki’s pain control wasn’t so good, he’d probably be in intense pain. In short, Jeb was not in good shape for a prison break.

But…it was his familiar. It was the principle of the thing. Plus, if he didn’t have Smartass’s help, it could hardly be considered his ‘best effort’.

Jeb grinned.

I’m getting the hang of this Deal.

***Later***

Where did it all go so wrong? Jeb thought, bound and gagged, kneeling in front of the emperor.

“And then he tried to escape with both the fairy and the undead,” the enforcer said, recounting the last fifteen minutes in a dry tone. “Shall I execute him now?”

“I’d like to hear Mr. Trapper speak for himself,” Pikaku said.

“Sire, he has traps keyed to his voice.” One of the enforcers spoke.

“He’s got traps keyed to his kegels,” Pikaku said, waving his hand dismissively.

Ooh, good idea, Jeb thought before one of the enforcers reached down and tore the gag out of his mouth.

“Speak,” Pikaku intoned as Jeb tried to cure his dry-mouth.

“I’ve got a plan that can solve your undead problems in a single move,” Jeb said.

“How?”

“Can you trust me, and dismiss the guards?” Jeb asked.

“Trust you?” Pikaku asked, his voice rising. “You’re facing execution for breaking our Deal!”

“Breaking our Deal!?” Jeb shouted, rising to his feet until he felt the edge of a blade at his neck. “The Deal was my ‘best effort’. There were no stipulations about respecting the law or not breaking my team out of prison.”

“Typical fairy garbage.”

“I decided it would be my ‘best effort’ if I had access to all my allies, rather than let them be wasted as hostages. You don’t need hostages. You’ve already got my word! You know I won’t break it!”

“And what is your plan, that a monstrosity of rotting flesh and steel and a deceitful spirit will make a difference?”

“I asked you to trust me,” Jeb said. “Everything I do is in service of finishing the job I promised I would finish. I’ll tell you when they’re gone,” Jeb said, glancing up at the melas with a sword to his neck.

Pikaku leaned back in his throne, head cocked to the side. “Leave us.”

“Sire—”

“Jebediah, here, has taken the Vow of truth. He’s able to bend his words a bit, but a direct statement is like iron. If you would give my bodyguards some reassurance?” Pikaku asked, motioning to Jeb.

“I promise not to take any action against you, nor trigger anything that would harm you by action or inaction, until I leave this room.”

Click.

“There you have it. Leave us,” Pikaku said.

With quite a bit of muttering and some pointed glares, the enforcers filed out of the room until it was just Jeb and the emperor.

Jeb had never been alone in a room with the brightly-feathered tyrant.

“Alright, we’re alone. Tell me your plan.”

Jeb climbed to his foot. “Your father has been reading the situation ahead of us in every encounter we’ve had with him.”

“He was a genius at warfare, intrigue and politics. I myself am only adequate,” Pikaku said with a shrug. “It was a large portion of the reason he wasn’t disposed of after…the incident. I felt he could be preserved as a resource.”

“I’ve got a method your father won’t see coming, and a plan that hinges on it that I think will trap him.”

“Enlighten me.”

Jeb took a deep breath. “Do you know what the words ‘astronomical spectroscopy’ mean?”

“I can’t say that I do.”

“Do you know what a satellite is?”

“A celestial body orbiting a planet,” Pikaku said with a shrug.

Jeb smiled.

“I take it that was not the correct response?”

“Technically, it was. Now, do you think your father will know what these things are any more than you do?”

Pikaku gave the kitri equivalent of a smirk, his neck undulating from side to side slowly. “No, I don’t think he will.”

“Allow me to begin by explaining what I think of when I hear the word ‘satellite’,” Jeb said.

Chapter 26: Master Baiter

***2 months ago, on a microscopic level***

A glimmer of gold Myst manifested, seemingly from nothing. If one were capable of standing in the fifth dimension, they would have been able to perceive its movement through the fourth, from the moment Queen Mab made a statement in the present.

“The paragon of humanity will be delivered to me, and Jebediah Trapper will not realize until it has been done.”

The Myst exploded outward from her, shooting backward through the block universe, rapidly diminishing as it traveled along the fourth dimension, like a salmon dying as it swam upstream.

By the time it reached where it was going, it only had a microscopic amount of energy. Plenty to change the future.

It bound to a tiny fungus spore, protecting it, nurturing it, and changing it in subtle ways. The spore was buried by fallen leaves in the shade of a boulder, where the wind naturally piled up the detritus.

The spore spread its mycelium through the dead plant matter, carrying nutrients back to a central core, several egg-like structures that slowly grew as the days went by, until they were finally mature.

A cluster of stinkhorn mushrooms grew from the ground, shaded and hidden by the boulder, releasing the faint smell of carrion into the air around a corpse that had been pinned on the opposite side of the rock by fairy lords mere hours into the fungus’s maturity.

The fungus bore silent witness as the subtly disfigured men stooped to pick up the squalling infant before silently vanishing into the woods, engulfed by the forest.

It did not know it had served the fairy queen’s purpose and literally thrown Jebediah Trapper off the scent. It simply released its spores and withered to nothing over the next few hours.

***Queen Mab, Present day***

I always did have a way with mushrooms, Mab thought, waving away her scrying as Jeb launched himself off on a fool’s errand for that petty mortal emperor.

She didn’t hold it against him. Like a dead-end job in food service, doing odd jobs for men in large chairs was just part of growing up…assuming you lived long enough.

Eventually, her progeny would outgrow it as he came into his own. Assuming he survived.

He looks so much like him… It’s infuriating.

Mab reoriented her thoughts as her retainers phased into her bedroom, carrying the object of her heart’s desire.

“Oh, dear child,” she crooned, plucking the human spawn out of her retainer’s arms. “You’re safe now, don’t worry.”

Now, meaning in the present moment, the girl is safe. In the future? Who knows.

“Did those mean, smelly undead hurt you?”

The one-year-old human child looked her in the eye and opened her mouth. “Maaam aaa uuu ouu eeaauu ee too daaa paaa aaa maaa mamma, daaa wooo bee maa apaa.”

*Madam, if you would return me to the palace, and my mother, that would be much appreciated.

Mab blinked. I think I need to use more advanced tactics than expected. Still, no matter how bright a one-year-old was, there was a dearth of experience.

“Casey, darling, I would return you to the palace, but it’s just so dangerous there, and I’m not even talking about the smelly women. I mean the emperor.”

“Da empaaa? Haa reee maa ooriii.”

*The emperor? He reads me stories.

“I’m not denying that, but have you ever wondered what your mother’s job is? And why she does it?”

“Saaataaa.”

*Sometimes.

“Allow me to teach you,” Mab said with a carefully crafted smile. Thousands of test babies preferred ‘motherly, but not too manic’.

***Jebediah Trapper***

Going shopping for massive satellites in the bones of old labs was a sobering experience.

The temples to the pinnacle of human technology were abandoned, gathering rust and a thick layer of grime. Doors and cabinets were jimmied open by desperate looters, looking for anything that could help them survive the famine that had gripped the continent.

Jeb hefted a high-tech battery that could power a house for a lifetime, then tossed it aside.

I think I’ve become numb to the coolness, he thought, glancing around at the weathered industrial setting.

Robots, lasers, nuclear power, special solar panels and foil designed to ward off the intense radiation of the sun. All of it was the sort of thing he’d’ve been drooling after when he was a kid.

Now…it was just a pile of junk. The infrastructure to make it cool no longer existed. There were no space programs, no cell phones or countries to spy on.

No astronauts.

Jeb’s gaze caught on a tank labeled ‘O2’. It was as tall as him, wired into a robotic oxy-acetylene torch about the size of a Volkswagen.

“Score.”

The tank was secured to the machine with some kind of proprietary nut, but Jeb simply grabbed the nut and yanked it out of the machine with overwhelming force. He picked up the tank with his Myst and sloshed it experimentally, feeling for the movement. There was definitely enough liquid oxygen to last someone a long-ass time.

Item acquired.

Although to be fair, there’s plenty of gear here to get the entertainment center working at the orphanage.

“Borg.”

“Eh?” Borg asked from across the room.

“Tell Eddie he needs to loot this place. It’s got a thousand things he could—HEY, GET OFF THAT!” Jeb shouted at Smartass, who was climbing on a pile of titanium scrap directly above some kind of grinding machine.

“Oh, come on, the power’s off. I’m sure it’s completely sa-AAAII!”

A pole loosened in Smartass’s grip, sending her tumbling down the pile, dozens of pieces of sharp titanium scrap metal falling down after her.

Her wing jammed itself into the grinder, preventing her from moving away as the pile of scrap collapsed down around her.

Jeb snapped his hand out, his body following his mind, which reached out and surrounded his familiar with a bubble of force.

Jeb held everything in place for a moment to make sure nothing else was going to happen, then he started carefully unburying Smartass and extracting her from the pile of scrap metal.

“God, how on earth did anyone in your species ever survive to maturity?” Jeb asked aloud as he pulled her out. Was Mab just the luckiest being on the planet, or was it just a numbers game?

Smartass was sitting on the bottom of the bubble of force, running her fingers over her wing, which had been crumpled up by the fall.

“I miss my wings,” she said, her face morose.

“You still have your wings,” Jeb said.

“They’re terrible now!” she said. “I can’t even fly. I tried to fly when I fell just now and it did nothing! I’m too fat and heavy and they’re not growing with me, like some kind of stunted limb!”

Crack. There was a soft ‘crack’, like someone had broken a piece of peanut brittle in the distance.

The crumpled section of Smartass’s wing fell off.

Smartass’s jaw dropped, lips forming a big ‘O’, eyes popping out of her skull. Jeb couldn’t help but see the resemblance to a stunned chimpanzee.

Having known the fairy for a long time, Jeb decided to spare himself, and put his hands over his ears preemptively. The screaming was much more tolerable than it might have been otherwise.

“I’m gonna die, I’m gonna die, I’m gonna die!” Smartass shouted, trying to stem the bleeding from the veins in her wings by pinching them off.

“You’re not gonna die,” Jeb said, taking his hands off his ears once Smartass had finished hyperventilating, looking a little woozy. “Let me get a look at it.”

He pried Smartass’s unwilling fingers away from her wing tip and really looked at it.

There was only a tiny bit of blood at the tip where the wing had broken away.

With a bit more study, Jeb figured out what was going on.

She’s losing her baby teeth, Jeb thought, eyeballing the subtle line of dying tissue around the base of each wing. The veins leading to the wings had closed off already; it was only a matter of time before the wings fell out the rest of the way. There might be a little bit of blood and healing afterward, but it was all natural, and nothing to be worried about.

“You want the good news or the bad news?”

“Bad news,” she said, glancing over her shoulder at him.

“Your wings are gonna fall out.”

Smartass inhaled a sharp gasp. “That’s terrible news! I need my wings!”

“I mean, if you have enough Myst, you can fly that way….”

“That’s for humans and other dumb plebians. I can’t believe I’m a land-bound dummy now. What did I do to deserve this!? It isn’t fair!”

“You want the good news?”

“How could there be ANY good news!?”

Jeb started to speak, but the fairy held up a finger.

“Give me another couple minutes to complain.”

Jeb returned to scanning the laboratory for a while as Smartass unleashed a torrent of creative cursing that skirted the edge of outright lies.

“Found a telescope that matches the specs Eddie sent, but it’s got a cracked lens, it’s missing some of the hardware it would need, and some of the wires have been cut for some reason. I think looters took a battery out of it, and they weren’t exactly experts,” Borg said.

“Put it in the ‘maybe’ pile,” Jeb said, barely able to hear himself over the sound of Smartass’s bawling. Maybe Borg was just reading his lips, because the undead nodded and began dragging the humongous telescope into the pile of ‘possibles’.

After a couple minutes of wailing, Jeb had had enough.

“Do you want the good news or not?”

Smartass sniffled, wiping away a tear. “Sure. I guess. But there’s nothing you could possibly say that would cheer me up.”

“There’s nothing wrong with you. Losing your wings seems to just be a part of maturing into your next life stage as a fairy. Like when kids lose their baby teeth.”

“So, what you’re saying is…” She sniffed away a bit of snot. “...me losing my wings means I’m better than all the other fairies with wings?”

Fairies grow with Impact and not time; objectively, Smartass is measurably more powerful than a winged fairy, so… “…Sure.”

“Wow.” Smartass brightened. “Wow! I’m better than them! Whoo!” She stood up and pumped her fists in the air. “Eat that, Leaf-Burrito! I’m better than you!” Smartass began moonwalking across the dusty linoleum.

“I thought you said nothing I could say would cheer you up.”

“That was true when I said it!” Smartass said. “It’s no longer when I said it, is it?”

“That is a really short half-life for a fact.”

“Eh, emotions fluctuate really fast.”

“Yours do, anyway,” Jeb said as Smartass moonwalked around him.

“Hey, Jeb! I got something here!” Borg called.

Jeb grunted, diverting his attention to the dilapidated door Borg was waving at him from.

The undead cyborg was standing where a metal door had been previously, the advanced locking system long since defunct. He’d torn the door straight off its hinges, allowing him access to a part of the lab that hadn’t been looted yet.

Jeb carefully walked around the muppet-sized moonwalker so as not to trip on her dance moves and crush her.

Jeb crossed the manufacturing section of the laboratory until he passed through the oversized doors Borg had motioned him from.

“What do you think that is?” Borg asked when Jeb arrived, pointing at a wooden crate the size of a small bus resting on a defunct forklift the size God might use. On the side were stamped the initials DOD in massive black letters. Underneath that was an address in smaller stamped letters.

Vandenberg Space Force Base, California.

“Paydirt.”

Without moving, Jeb reached out with his Myst and tore the pressboard sides of the box apart, leaving a massive cylindrical object strapped to a pallet and surrounded in hard foam.

“Hoolyyyy shiiit,” Borg said, walking around the satellite, drinking it in. “This was going to be the most advanced spy satellite in the U.S. arsenal until the Stitching ended the country.”

“Is that good?” Jeb asked. It sounded good.

“It’s nuanced,” Borg replied. “It’s powerful enough to see the chemical trail of a fart from a hundred miles in the sky.”

Yeah, that’s exactly what we need.

“It’s also a Department of Defense machine, so it’s loaded with anti-tampering software. Means altering its programming will be…how do you meatsacks put it…a bitch. This was designed to be controlled only by a specific console.”

“Ah, I see what you mean about nuance,” Jeb muttered. It was just a paperweight if they couldn’t actually use it.

“If this had been a science satellite, it would be easier to work with.”

“Can Eddie talk to it?” Jeb asked. The System was something that machines were never designed to resist. Eddie’s ability to directly connect to machines should allow them to bypass the console requirement.

Borg nodded in thought. “That might work.”

“Alright,” Jeb said, putting the massive slabs of pressboard back where they came from before picking up the box with his Myst. “Let’s throw this and all the possibles into one of the shipping containers in the cargo bay,” Jeb said.

“Do you really need all the batteries and solar panels?” Borg asked. “Pretty sure this thing has an internal battery.” He rapped his knuckles on the crate.

“They aren’t making batteries and solar panels anymore, especially not space-grade ones. These are incredibly valuable now.”

“You just want movie night at the orphanage.”

Frikken Eddie, refusing to share the electricity from his Myst generator.

“I got the whole setup!” Jeb cried. “A 75-inch TV looted from Wal-mart, a library of DVDs and games, a sweet sound bar I lifted from Best Buy, every brand of console… It just needs power! The children will love it! Think of the children!”

Borg raised a brow.

“Bah.”

They worked in silence for the next few minutes, loading everything of value into a big red shipping container, including spare lenses and hardware that Eddie might be able to use. If the defense satellite was unusable, maybe they could tear its guts out and replace them with something that worked better.

That would probably take too long, though. Jeb’s internal clock flared back to life. Casey the Third was probably dead already, and if she wasn’t, every second of delay was likely to be lethal.

Jeb put a lid on the twisting guilt in his gut and focused on work and joking around with Borg. He could process later, when his life and the lives of thousands of others didn’t hang in the balance.

***Later***

Creak!

The shipping container’s doors let out a screech as Eddie and Ron pried the massive doors apart. A thin beam of light fell onto the cargo, rapidly expanding as the steel panels moved out of the way on rusting hinges.

“Sweet Jesus!” Eddie shouted when his eyes adjusted.

“Yeah, survivors over the last year were looking for things like canned foods, more than advanced microprocessors and self-contained power systems,” Jeb said, arms crossed.

“This is a goddamn treasure trove,” Ron said, eyeballing the solar panels. “I was looking for a way to power my farm’s well that didn’t involve rotting meat.”

“Get your own civilian solar panels,” Jeb said. “There’s gotta be a thousand solar farms out there you could raid, no problem.”

“Fine,” Ron said, rolling his eyes.

“Yeah, we can definitely cobble something together with this,” Eddie said, climbing into the shipping container and laying his hands on the cracked telescope the size of a car before moving on to the various hardware, humming to himself excitedly.

“Actually, I was thinking you might not have to,” Jeb said, pointing to the crate in the back of the container.

Jeb removed the panels and Eddie fell to his knees at the sight of the fully-constructed satellite, his eyes tearing up.

“Yeah,” he said with a strangled voice. “That’ll work.”

Jeb moved the satellite out into the yard and Eddie began to interface with it, a telltale spark of Myst traveling between his fingertips and the metal siding of the machine.

After a few minutes, Eddie cussed up a storm, turning to Jeb.

“Damnit, this isn’t gonna work,” the wispy-haired roboticist said, looking up at Jeb.

“How so?”

“I can get in and I can add the software that will allow it to perform spectroscopy and search for high concentrations of undead, but the damn thing’s protection is hard-wired into it. Every time I pull out, it shuts itself down, and I have to break in again. It’s not gonna work.”

“You mean it’s not gonna work…without you?”

Eddie blanched. “What are you saying?”

“You afraid of heights, Eddie?” Jeb asked, cocking a brow.

“Umm….”

***Eddie***

“Oh god, oh god, oh god,” Eddie said, clinging to Jeb’s side.

He’s trying to kill me. I swear to god, he’s trying to kill me!

“What’s the matter?” Jeb, the monster, asked. “I put a rug down on the bottom of our bubble specifically so you wouldn’t be able to see the ground.” Jeb patted the woven mat on the bottom of the telekinetic bubble blocking the view.

“I can see the curvature of the earth!” Eddie shouted, pointing to the side, where the horizon had become a quaint notion.

“The curvature of Pharos,” Jeb corrected.

“This is insane!”

“Not insane, just a creative application of Myst.”

Jeb’s new watch, brought along specifically for this purpose, went off.

“Oop, half an hour; time to recharge the air. Don’t freak out.”

A pinhole opened in the bubble surrounding them, and he could immediately feel the drop in pressure. Eddie whined, squirming in place as his ears popped. If I die with my blood literally boiling in my body, I’m gonna haunt the shit out of you.

Then Jeb turned the handle on the massive oxygen tank, refilling the bubble with a burst of life-giving air. Immediately, Eddie felt better. A moment later, the pinhole closed, and the pressure stabilized.

Another two hours and four recharges went by before they were in low-Pharos orbit, approximately one hundred and twenty miles above the ground.

Meet Jeb, the human space-elevator.

They weren’t actually moving at the speed required for orbit. Instead, they were hovering over the De’naan Continent, the spy satellite pointed straight down.

Huh, there’s at least two other continents. Neat. I wonder what’s on them, Eddie thought idly as he booted up the laptop with shaking hands.

Eddie entered his password wrong twice before he got it, opening up the control setup for the satellite. He didn’t have time to make fancy buttons for everything, so he had to enter all the commands in DOS. Jeb’s eyes looked like they were swimming as the code swam by, and that amused Eddie enough to calm him down a bit.

“Alright, for those of you tuning in at home, this is called spectroscopy, a branch of science that studies the interaction of light and matter. In this case, we’re measuring the specific wavelengths of light absorbed and reflected by the chemical cocktail given off by undead, known as ‘miasma.’ First, we take a picture of the continent,” Eddie muttered, entering a short code and pressing ‘enter’.

A visual of the land showed up on his monitor.

“Then we apply the formula to identify and magnify the visual stimulus of miasma.”

He entered another code, pressed enter, and a tracework of ugly bruised purple popped up, overlaid on top of the picture. It looked like the spreading of a bacterial colony on a Petri dish.

At the center: a small town with such high concentration, it was nearly solid black. There couldn’t possibly be anyone living there anymore. There would have to be more undead than there had been original inhabitants.

In short…

“They’re massing there,” Jeb muttered. He glanced over his shoulder at the knot of green Myst. “You get all that?”

***Emperor Pikaku, Uniter of the Continent, Ruler of Mestikos, Level 328***

“Indeed I did,” Pikaku said, sliding a claw along the bottom of his beak as he watched his Seer’s scrying.

Pikaku motioned his secretary closer.

“Hire that man away from Mr. Trapper. Make it a sweet deal. Standing offer. Pay Jebediah a finder’s fee as well, to smooth things over.”

Never a bad time to scout for talent. That was the one area Pikaku could honestly consider himself his father’s equal.

“Sire.” The secretary nodded and moved away.

“What’s the name of that town?” he asked, glancing off to the side, where a bug-eyed assistant was fumbling through various maps of the country as quickly as he could.

“Unden Falls, sire. It’s a small town to the north of Mestikos.”

“Did anyone else notice what it’s directly on top of?” Pikaku asked.

“A tributary of the Sekver River,” his general said, nodding. “It feeds directly to the capital. The undead could, given enough numbers, poison our water, or ride the current to blitz us in a matter of hours, but if we tried to approach them, they would have days of advance notice. The sight lines from the town are excellent.”

“It seems we’ve discovered my father’s base of operations,” Pikaku said, clasping his fingers together to conceal their trembling.

This was the moment of truth. A calculated gamble. If his father figured it out, it was all for naught. If he fell for it, they could salvage this situation and preserve the nation a while longer. Until the next crisis, anyway.

“Send everyone we have.”

“Excuse me, sire?”

“You heard me,” Pikaku said. “Send every available enforcer to that town by way of the other infected villages. Burn them to the ground, leave no place for the undead to hide. They must be stamped out with overwhelming force.”

“Very well, sire. I’ll arrange for Gamon and—”

“Everyone, including my bodyguards. Send the imperial guards as well. Everyone. I want to be the only one in the palace with a level higher than twenty. Understood?”

“But, sire—”

Pikaku glanced over and met his general’s gaze.

The hardened warrior swallowed. “E-everyone. I will see to it.”

“And make it fast. There’s no guarantee they’ll stay there once they realize they’ve been spotted.”

Pikaku caught the man as he was turning away. “Oh, and make absolutely sure no one sees you leave. We can’t afford to tip off the targets.”

His father had a knack for putting together tiny tidbits of information and finding weaknesses that were best kept hidden.

The general nodded in grim acknowledgement before he hustled out.

“You too,” Pikaku said to his bodyguards, waving them to follow the general.

Once everyone was gone, Pikaku sighed and leaned back in his throne. The die had been cast. It was actually something of a weight off his shoulders.

Either it would work…or it wouldn’t. No longer was the burden of responsibility and decision-making weighing down on his shoulders. Everything that followed was a consequence of their preparations.

Pikaku took a deep breath and reached under his throne. There was a hidden compartment placed there who-knew-how-many generations ago, meant for weapons and secret documents, but for Pikaku, it was to hide his weaknesses.

He retrieved his one bit of nostalgia: an old candle made of crude tallow with a wick made of torn cloth. It was nearly identical to the one he and his father had improvised to keep their tent warm during their winter hunting trips.

Pikaku lit it and sat back in the throne, allowing the warmth of the flame to heat his fingers, the scent of tallow evoking a gentler time.

Pikaku sat, considering the candle, and life in general.

There was a non-sound from the left: a deadening of the air as something passed between him and the wall.

“I’m disappointed,” his father said, the flickering flame in his eyes manifesting in the darkness to Pikaku’s left. “Again, you expose your most valuable piece to chase a perceived benefit. I admit that your fancy human technique did locate my base, and in a matter of seconds, too, but you got too excited and overextended yourself. Again. Son, you’ve become predictable.”

“How did you know?” Pikaku asked, allowing the flames to curl around his talons, sending the heat back through his fingers.

“You spent hours crowing about the brilliance of this ‘spectroscopy’ plan, plenty of time to get ready to clone a scrying. And your enforcers aren’t exactly subtle. It was easy to spot them leaving the palace in droves. Gods, it was almost like you wanted me to come...”

His father turned and bolted for the door.

Pikaku lifted a talon.

“Boop.”

Chapter 27: The Hunt

***Jeb’s Notes, 6 hours ago***

Former emperor Yikipa Kupei, victor of the battle of…

Too many to list. Led from the front. Almost united the continent until his death at the battle of Garenth Falls in the Death Wilds.

Mab?

…If the former emperor had an effective level over three thousand due to Damsel doping, only Mab, Vex, God, or maybe his own son could have killed him.

Nevermind, I’m not here to figure out whodunnit.

864 years old. Dude’s been around the block. Seems like the Kupei family might dabble in immortality practices.

Old, experienced, underhanded, brilliant, powerful. A bad ruse won’t work. 864 years is gonna be hard to beat.

Need a chink in the armor.

Technology? Inflexibility?

Modern battles use line formations and occasionally champions fighting champions. They have for a millennium, as new tech is never better than a spell or Class.

Need to catch off-guard with a red herring. Too smart for red herring? Distract with a checkmate. Much better. How to find him?

Smell?

Satellites! If scientists can determine a planet’s atmosphere a million miles away with a telescope, there’s gotta be a way to see smells.

ID his location and force his hand. Occupy his mind with the details of what a newfangled satellite can do, use as a powerfully distracting red herring to mask a simple setup.

What can the actual spell do? He’s just too strong and wily to get killed by a simple spell. It just doesn’t have the range to take him out by itself.

I just can’t summarize an ancient like that. He’s gotta have way more up his sleeve than I could ever predict.

Reorient expectation. Use spell as support rather than a magic bullet. Pair it with someone who actually has a shot at killing. Mab, Vex, or God…and son.

His son?

Use emperor as bait, satellite as distraction, spell as trump card? Is it even strong enough to do any good?

Jeb paused and looked up from his musing as he waited for Piwaki to finish healing them, when the System notification blared to the forefront of his mind:

Congratulations, you have achieved level 50 as a Mystic Trapsmith, and unlocked the second Class Ability.

Mystic Framework: User may build an immobile framework of Myst that allows the user’s Myst inside to be manipulated in higher concentrations and detail. The framework must be rebuilt each time, dissipates when not in use.

Jeb’s eyebrows rose.

A torrent of information and someone else’s hard-earned experience flooded into Jeb. He could almost perceive it being shoved into him in the fifth dimension.

If Jeb had to describe it in layman’s terms, the skill was a bit like going from working with cheap stone tools in a grassy field to a carpenter’s well-appointed garage. Lathe, band saw, jig, belt sander, you name it.

Essentially, the Framework provided a massive qualitative uptick in the traps he could produce…although it was not strictly limited to traps; it just synthesized very well with Mystic Triggers. Hence it being his second Ability.

Poking the knowledge around in his head, he felt it could also be used as a form of booster and safety device when experimenting with creating new Myst wavelengths.

Higher accuracy and easier manipulation in addition to Myst walls around the experiment which could cut off the power, deaden explosions, or disrupt grey goo scenarios before they got out of control… It was an excellent ability.

Sweet. Although, at the moment, the only use I have for it is supercharging the trap to murder the former emperor.

Admittedly, that’s a very relevant use. Now I just need to find a way to talk to the emperor in private.

Jeb glanced down at the notepad.

Get arrested?

****Jebediah Trapper, now***

Jeb sat on the side of the road, practicing with his new Ability. Currently, he was pushing his micro-spells to their limit, with a glowing rectangular box of reddish-orange Myst between his thumb and forefinger.

Myst flowed out of his fingers and entered two ends of the box. One was the feed of raw unadulterated Myst, and one powered the Framework itself, a complex piece of magical machinery that he currently activated more by instinct than understanding. Which would be rectified.

Inside the Framework, Jeb could exert a level of control over the Myst that he’d never experienced before. Unparalleled accuracy and density.

To that end, Jeb was toying with the idea of making something akin to a microchip.

I need a book on computing and logic gates. Maybe a lot of books. He already knew a lot about how to do it magically, but some study on the human version could definitely streamline things.

Jeb was currently trying to do something he’d never done before: create a self-sustaining spell with simple logic gates that could take raw Myst input, and output a pre-defined spell.

In short, a way to recharge his most common, simple traps without having to manually create them each and every time. His first tool created entirely out of Myst.

Good, this one hasn’t exploded yet… he thought, before carefully allowing the Framework to dissipate.

Once the stabilization of the Framework was removed, a tiny flaw in the spell erupted, and the entire thing went whirling wildly off into the distance like a deflating balloon.

Well, back to the drawing board, Jeb thought, frowning before a vague sense of oddness struck the back of his mind.

They’re coming.

Jeb stood from his rock with his arms crossed, facing the empty road.

An instant later, no less than six invisible enforcers rebounded off a soft wall that flickered into place in response to their presence. The enforcers flashed into visibility as they landed, weapons out and ready to throw down.

Jeb kept his hands tucked away. Putting your hands up wasn’t quite innocuous when Myst was a factor.

At the speed they’d been moving, they’d be halfway to their destination in a handful of minutes.

“Afternoon,” Jeb said, meeting their eyes one by one. “I’d like all of you to turn around and head back to the palace.”

“What’s the meaning of this?” the one in the lead asked, an older-looking kitri.

“Hey, are you one of Vresh’s cousins?” Jeb asked one of the younger melas enforcers in the corner of the formation who looked familiar. “How’s your dad? Is he Vresh’s son yet?”

If I married Vresh, that guy would be my stepson. Politics is weird.

“Jebediah Trapper? Why are you here? We just saw you a hundred miles in the air.”

“Correction,” Jeb said, holding up a finger. “You just saw Vresh a hundred miles in the air. I realized I’m not actually required to be there to lift the satellite. Only my Myst. What I am currently doing is holding you here until such a time as the emperor decides to call for assistance.”

“We don’t take orders from you.”

“Of course you don’t, but I’m fairly certain that we’ll see something that will make you decide to turn around and head back to the city. I’m just giving you a head-start.”

Jeb rocked on his heels as the silence of the moment engulfed them.

“Aaany minute now.”

Distant thunder drew their attention back to Mestikos as one of the towers sloughed off of the ivory palace, the result of some internal explosion.

“Enforcers! Back to the emperor!”

There it is, Jeb thought, swaddling himself in telekinesis and putting on speed, keeping pace with the enforcers currently making highway speeds look tame.

***Emperor Pikaku, Uniter of the Continent, Ruler of Mestikos, level 328***

“Boop.”

An explosion rocked the throne room, as the entire palace shuddered violently.

The doors burst open as megatons of stone that used to be palace collapsed into the halls, filling them entirely, making escape impossible. At least, not while both of them were alive.

“You didn’t have anywhere else to be, did you?”

Father turned around, his neck waggling in amusement as he spread his arms. “You tricked me. My boy, I’ve never been prouder of you.”

Pikaku nodded in acknowledgment. “A sad statement, if true.”

“You know what I was least proud of? Your choice of Myst. I told you a strong country needs a strong ruler, and what do you do? You idolize Myst that’s only useful for bureaucracy and calling for your MOTHER!”

Father’s Myst swirled around him, and he leapt forward, speed and power nearly beyond Pikaku’s ability to respond to.

Father’s talons passed through the back of the throne as if it were a soft cheese. Pikaku was barely able to ward off the blow, a shooting pain erupting through his wrist as he was catapulted off his seat and into the wall.

“That should’ve broken you, unless you finally raised Body instead of relying on your women,” Father said, glancing down at his hand, where several tiny telekinetic needles had pierced his wrist bones. He flexed and the needles crumbled to nothing, leaving small holes in the bone.

“Huh. You realize I don’t feel pain or bleed, right?”

“You, father, like any other thing, are made of matter. And all matter has a certain level of durability. Harrier.”

As soon as Pikaku said the word, three tiny dots of glowing white blinked into existence around him, moving erratically, like flies made of pure light.

“Well put,” his father said, watching the Myst constructs carefully. “And what will these quaint little motes do?”

“They’re Harriers. They harry you.”

“Seems like they’re just flickering around,” Father said.

Pikaku spun up the Myst Core in his chest, praying that he still had enough power to Summon his general and the enforcers that followed him. His power was no longer godlike, and was thus extremely limited in the scale and scope of the causality it could bend to Summon others.

“Gorbas—”

Father leapt forward, riding a tide of crimson Myst, scattering Pikaku’s imploding silver Myst to the wind, ruining the Summon as he unleashed a flurry of swipes at Pikaku’s face. Pikaku ducked out of the way, blocked what he could, but he still wound up with gouges across his face and chest, being wiped violently across the marble floor like a bloody rag.

The harriers took the opportunity to flash down toward Father’s back, operating almost entirely in the ancient warrior’s blind spots.

Each of the three harriers independently chose a limb and streaked towards it, causing Father’s attacks to slow down long enough for Pikaku to disengage.

“Keensha bra gosh!” Father shouted, snapping out a punch at the harriers, which immediately flickered away, moving even faster than the boney warrior could, once again moving erratically. One seemed as though it was going to flicker towards Father, but stopped and pulled away when the former emperor tensed.

“I’ll admit they’re annoying, but—” His father paused as he took a step and had to catch his balance. His rear toe talon had been perforated by one of the harriers, and snapped off, causing a tiny instant of imbalance.

The harriers didn’t let the opportunity go to waste, flashing down at Father, who devolved into a blur of motion, warding them off and dodging them with unnatural alacrity. However, the harriers immediately withdrew as soon as the skeletal kitri regained his poise enough to try and destroy the spells.

“Gorbash Jes—”

Father let out a war-honk, and charged Pikaku, his eyes flickering with flame that flashed off the smooth obsidian curve of his claws.

Pikaku was unable to finish without losing his beak, forced to close his mouth and jerk his head out of the way of the attack, which then changed into a knife-hand strike to his leg.

His father’s claws parted flesh as easily as steel, embedding themselves in Pikaku’s thigh.

Several more telekinetic needles jutted out from Pikaku’s thigh and struck Father’s wrist, bouncing off the concentration of Myst Father had placed around his joints.

“You let yourself become the BAIT in a forced battle of attrition!? What kind of fool are you!? After everything I taught you about being an emperor!?”

Father had already ascertained that the harriers were designed to slowly wear away at his speed advantage by targeting his feet and joints, and had concentrated his Myst around them, keeping his joints impenetrable to Jebediah’s nasty spell.

The entire game plan was to wear Father down, one tiny piece at a time. The harriers were doing their job just by forcing Father to devote his Myst to defense.

“This isn’t a battle. This is a hunt.” Pikaku struck out with his claws, targeting the creature’s jaw.

Snap! A small piece of the undead’s jaw snapped against Pikaku’s aligned claws, weakening any future bite attempts.

One tiny piece at a time.

A shield popped up and cushioned the monster’s reflexive kick, launching Pikaku backwards without knocking the air out of him.

“Gorbash Jeshki—”

The monster arrived just in time to stop Pikaku from speaking, battering the emperor with a series of strikes. Anything that would cause more than a bruise was softened by small telekinetic shields.

Meanwhile, Pikaku grabbed a hand and forced a torrent of his own raw Myst into it. Myst was the only Attribute that had ever truly rivaled his father’s. He expected it would be similar for this creature.

The crimson protection was washed away, and the harriers leapt upon the opportunity, turning the undead’s wrist into a pockmarked mess.

With a grunt of effort, Pikaku snapped the hand directly off the creature’s arm before tossing it aside.

The undead stood stock still, staring at the skeletal hand as Pikaku tossed it aside, skittering across the stone floor of the room.

“I suppose a change of tactics is necessary.” He reached under his ribcage, concealed by his voluminous robes, and retrieved a short sword made of heavily enchanted faradan. It sported a pommel with a rather large enclosed prism feeding a variety of magical effects.

A harrier came a bit too close and was swatted like the fly it resembled, exploding with a bang reminiscent of a firecracker, its Myst dissipating into the environment.

The Myst was cannibalized by the other two, causing them to burn brighter and fly faster. Two more harriers emerged from Pikaku’s chest, adding their number to the strengthened ones.

“Clever,” the undead muttered before flipping his grip on the blade and stabbing himself in the chest.

Pikaku only had the blink of an eye to process what his enemy was doing, barely able to bound away before an explosion of fog blanketed the room.

“You tricked me with human tactics. I think it’s only fair I return the favor.

“This, boy,” the undead said, running his claws through the fog rolling from his rib cage, “is what’s known as ‘nerve gas’. It’s fatal to anything with less than fifty Body and paralytic to anything below one hundred and fifty; above that, it’s merely inconvenient.”

He eyed Pikaku. “Where do you fall, son?”

Paralytic, but Pikaku wasn’t going to reveal that. Besides, paralysis was death in a fight like this, and they both knew it. Plus, he could be lying.

And of course, the bastard doesn’t breathe. A simple, brutally effective tactic, as he was known for.

Pikaku retreated to the relatively unspoiled air as far away from the creature as he could get and took a deep breath, holding it as he took a stance.

One way or another, you’re not leaving this room, Father.

The undead drew the blade back out of his own chest with a flourish and charged.

***Jebediah Trapper***

“Move away!” Jeb shouted to the half dozen or so enforcers digging through the rubble. They hustled aside as Jeb’s Myst ballooned out of him.

Jeb made a drill seven feet in diameter with a twenty-foot-long hollow tube behind it, and started boring straight through the ruined palace, a procession of powerful warriors directly behind him.

They made good time, and in only fifteen tense seconds of drilling, they emerged in the empty chamber that Jeb had reinforced with his Myst only a few hours earlier to serve as a roach motel for the undead.

I really hope the emperor keeps the cause of the collapse a bro-secret between the two of us, ‘cuz I cannot pay for the reconstruction of a palace. We could always blame the undead dude.

Jeb’s skin went cold when his eyes took in the situation.

The emperor was mangled, leaning against the far wall, his lacerated arms held in front of himself defensively, his breathing extremely shallow, yellow feathers caked in his own blood.

The undead stood over him, blood dripping from a faintly-glowing blue blade in the creature’s hand. His other hand was crawling aimlessly across the floor.

The creature glanced at them, then back down at the emperor. “I didn’t let you finish saying anything,” he said with an accusatory tone.

“I’m sure that’s the only way people can rush to my defense,” Pikaku said, not too wounded for sarcasm.

“Bah.” The creature made a quick jab for Pikaku’s throat, which a glowing white dot intersected, knocking the strike aside just enough for the emperor to slump out of the way.

Seeing this, the enforcers went apeshit, and Jeb had no choice but to get out of the way, or they would charge through him.

Jeb dropped the force drill and dove to the side as the enforcers flew past him.

Jeb tasted something on the air as he pushed himself back to his foot, his lungs seizing mid-breath.

I know that smell!

The bony bastard had filled the room with sarin gas! Where the hell did he get his hands on—doesn’t matter, just gotta rectify the situation.

Jeb stopped breathing entirely and took stock. There was one major hole allowing air in right now: the one he’d drilled in. If he had two holes, he could form a bladder of telekinetic force and violently shove fresh air into the room…

Okay, I don’t have time to create a second air-hole, but I can just use a wall of force to split the seven-foot hole into two parts. Ideally, he would flush all the air inside out by forming a bladder around it, but there were no less than ten people engaged in a swordfight inside. He couldn’t just bladder them.

Having figured out what he needed, Jeb made what was essentially a massive syringe out of telekinetic force, nearly bigger than the palace. The ‘needle’ was about four feet wide and ran the length of his tunnel into the room. He ducked down against the side of the wall and clung to something heavy.

Fire in the hole, Jeb thought as he started to depress the ‘plunger’ side of his massive syringe full of air.

Whoosh!

A tremendous wind blasted the combatants, although they barely noticed, so focused were they on their game of cat and mouse with the skeletal creature. Their only acknowledgement of the wind was a change of stance. Their eyes never left their prey.

Pikaku’s father was stronger and faster than they were, but they outnumbered him. The enforcers surrounded the undead like a pack of hunting dogs, taking turns darting in for a furtive attack before backing away quickly, not giving the creature time to effectively deal with any single one of them.

Jeb ran up to Pikaku while the enforcers kept the creature at bay.

The emperor’s shallow breathing was almost nonexistent. His eyes were alert, but fading fast.

“The poison is designed to stop your breathing,” Jeb said. “I fixed the air in the room, but I’m going to need you to lower your Myst defenses to allow me to manually breathe for you.”

Jeb thought he saw a nod. Maybe there was none because of the paralysis, but when he went to force air into Pikaku’s lungs, his Myst was able to get past the emperor’s powerful magic.

It had been tricky to install those traps inside him when the emperor had more Myst than Jeb.

“Okay, breath going in,” Jeb murmured so Pikaku would be able to anticipate the movement. “Breath going out.”

“Kiyaku Uapi,” Pikaku croaked as Jeb worked his lungs like a bellows, his Myst exploding into the past—i.e. imploding.

“By all the gods, what’s going on here?”

Jeb glanced over his shoulder and spotted a kitri in what could only be described as religious garb, clambering down out of the hole in the wall.

“My lord!” the priest shouted, eyes widening upon spotting the emperor slumped in the corner of the room.

“Shit,” the undead monster cursed, darting towards the priest. An enforcer full-body tackled the skeleton, receiving several mortal wounds from the glowing faradan blade, but dragging the creature forcibly away from the healer.

The priest paid no attention to any of this, sprinting towards the emperor at full speed, sliding to a halt on his knees in front of him.

There was a lightning bolt of pure, minty-white healing Myst that crossed the gap between the two of them, so strong Jeb could taste it behind his eyeballs.

A moment later, Pikaku tapped Jeb on the shoulder and Jeb moved out of the way as the kitri levered himself to his feet.

“Let’s finish this. Save him.” He pointed at the rapidly-bleeding-out enforcer before rejoining the battle, snatching the blade from the fallen warrior’s hand.

It wasn’t a fair fight. It was a brutal tag-team against a stronger opponent. A pack of wolves hunting a sabertooth.

It was long and drawn-out, every now and then a blow landing on the undead’s joints, diminishing his power by an imperceptible amount. But the damage accumulated, until finally a fatal blow was struck, the emperor himself carving the creature’s rib cage in half before lopping off the monster’s legs.

Oh, thank god. Jeb felt palpable relief as the skeleton was checkmated. The toughest, most dangerous target was taken care of. All the other Damsels were just a case of mopping up. The enforcers could easily do it by themselves, and Jeb’s Deal would be complete.

“Hold him,” Pikaku spat, and the surrounding enforcers restrained the remaining arm and head of the former emperor.

“Where’s the baby?” Pikaku demanded.

The skeletal partial torso cocked its head to the side. “I don’t know. I thought you had her.”

Wait, what?

“Oooh…shit.” The words rolled off Jeb’s tongue unbidden.

Chapter 28: God Pronouns

‘I intend to renegotiate the Deal with a paragon of humanity. That’s something that you could help me with, Jebediah Trapper. As one of the most powerful humans of your time, and a scion of mine, you make an ideal candidate.’

—Queen Mab, misleading the crap out of some loser.

***Queen Mab***

“So you see, humans are a lot like children,” Mab explained to the credulous child. “Myst is a very dangerous thing to possess, and much of the time it is used improperly. Does your mommy let you touch fire or handle a gun? Of course not, because she loves you, and I have loved humans for over a thousand years.” Certain ones, from time to time.

“If human Myst were under the control of someone more stable, who could correctly identify who is responsible enough to use it wisely, then dole it out accordingly, so many senseless tragedies could be avoided.” Someone other than me.

“Ooo waaa aiii dooo?” Casey 3 asked.

*So what do I do?

“Just sign right here. After you do that, I’ll be strong enough to keep bad people from using their Myst to hurt others—your mommy included. I know you only influence a select few people right now, like your mommy and my grandson, but as you grow older, the Deal will grow with you, to influence most of the world. Isn’t that exciting?” Mab’s heartbeat was carefully kept at a steady tempo. It wouldn’t do for her veins to pound and tip off the wretched spawn of Arthur.

The baby looked down at the long contract, her lips pursed in thought.

She picked up the pen and dipped it in the well of blood.

***Jebediah Trapper***

“FUCK!” Jeb shouted, sudden and involuntary, like a sneeze, startling the battle-hyped veterans standing beside him.

She’s got Casey the Third! A paragon of humanity. Not an ideal candidate; the perfect one.

Casey the Third was like a humongous ball of Impact. Immortal almost from birth, the girl was smarter, stronger, faster than all of her peers, was friends with the emperor, and her birth mother was a badass, powerful in her own right.

The baby was born with a royal flush in her hand. Twenty years from now, she’d be running this place.

You don’t get much more paragon than that.

“Something wrong, Trapper?” Pikaku asked.

Jeb froze, glancing at Pikaku, his mouth hanging open as his mind chased its own tail.

I can’t tell him what Mab wants, because their goals align. No matter how cool of a guy the emperor has been on a personal level, if I were to tell him humans were about to be permanently stripped of their Myst, he would welcome the creation of a slave race, because it benefits the empire.

But you could tell him that Mab’s about to take advantage of Casey the Third. He likes that girl.

But he’ll wanna know why, then he’ll figure out how she’s being taken advantage of.

Maybe I could ask for him to release me from the Deal?

“Would—”

Giving up now? That’s not your ‘best effort’.

The request to excuse himself died on his tongue because it wasn’t conducive to holding up his end of the Deal.

Shit! Jeb thought, his face twitching.

“For personal reasons, I would like to complete the terms of our Deal as quickly as possible.”

The emperor’s eyes narrowed. “Why? Does it have something to do with Casey?”

Jeb’s lips tightened, the weight of his entire species bearing down on him.

Pikaku turned to face Jeb fully, the weight of the bird’s authority bearing down on him as he became the focus of all the enforcers in the claustrophobic room.

“Mr. Trapper, you’ve performed admirably carrying out our agreement, and I applaud your quick wit and heroism, but I have not failed to notice the chaos that follows in your wake. I would very much like to avoid another situation like this.” He motioned to his restrained skeletal father.

“For the safety of my people…tell me why you’re so eager to finish your task.”

“I have a compulsion,” Jeb hemmed.

“But the compulsion isn’t what’s causing you to sweat. Why did you curse when he told us he doesn’t know where the baby is?” Pikaku cocked his head to the side.

“Because you do, obviously,” he continued, connecting the sparse dots. “But you can’t tell me, because telling me will cause intense backlash upon you or someone you care about.

“That’s about as far as I can reason without more information,” the emperor said. “You will give us that information. Gentlemen, destroy the undead and place Mr. Trapper under arrest.”

At his words, the emperor’s former father was incinerated where he was held by a melas with fire powers.

Ah, crap. Pikaku wasn’t a bad guy, he just thought Jeb was being intolerably shifty…which was pretty much true.

Damnit, what can I do? What’s my best-effort play here? If I let them arrest me, the situation will pass me by, which is unacceptable. If I manage to escape, I have to deal with the undead Damsels first, which will take far too long. Also unacceptable.

Jeb’s thumb brushed the blue scroll in his pocket.

Or we could explore option three.

The enforcers were inching towards him, narrowing his options by the second.

Well, this isn’t gonna make me any friends.

“Operation Straightjacket,” Jeb said.

All the remaining traps inside Pikaku were activated by their secondary triggers.

Pikaku’s body was strapped in place by hundreds of telekinetic bands that lifted him up into the air.

Hundreds of harriers popped out of his body and began hovering around him menacingly like a swarm of bees, waiting for someone to try and get him down. It wasn’t enough to stop them forever, but it sure as hell would take a while untangling that mess.

“Really? Treachery?” Pikaku asked, his voice calm.

“You tried to arrest me first, so I think I’ll call it square.

“Now back off, unless you want me to activate another trap on your beloved emperor,” Jeb said suggestively, causing the enforcers to hesitate.

“Is there a trap on me, that would kill me? Yes or no,” Pikaku asked.

“…Shit.” Yes or no questions. My only weakness. Jeb picked himself up with a rope of Myst and flung himself towards the exit.

Jeb warded off a blast of green fire and tripped a young salamander-man sprinting towards him at highway speeds, causing the kid to get a concrete facial.

Hopefully his Body mitigates that.

Another enforcer tried to make the walls and ceiling foam up around Jeb, but he simply drilled through it with overwhelming force.

A bolt of teal Myst struck him in the chest, but fizzled because it wasn’t stronger than his. There was a slight itching sensation.

Two more flashed towards him and looked worrisome, so Jeb interposed a wall of telekinesis between himself and them, then tied the knot and made it permanent, blocking off the hallway for a few precious seconds.

Concrete Facial’s doppleganger met him outside the tunnel, looking fine.

“Can you copy yourself?” Jeb asked incredulously.

Instead of answering, the little butthead snuck a tendril of Myst past Jeb’s guard and landed a hit on his shirt, where a little brightly-colored duplicate appeared, half-emerging from his shirt.

Then it started biting him.

“Ow, ow, that’s really cool, ow!” Jeb tore the shirt off and flung it at the charging enforcer’s face, parried another Myst attack and violently changed direction, heading straight up. Most enforcers couldn’t fly, and of those remaining, most couldn’t fly as high as Jeb.

Jeb lost pursuit in the lower stratosphere, then rocketed back down to Pharos behind a mountain, re-entering the city from a low angle.

I wonder if they'll raise the bounty on me, Jeb wondered as he proceeded to head toward the prison where Borg was being detained…again.

Jeb caught a flash of movement to his left, which turned out to be Borg and Smartass, waving to him from the top of a building.

Borg opened a door and the three of them swooped into what appeared to be an old lady’s apartment, with tea cozies and crocheted doilies.

“Borg,” Jeb said as he sat down.

“Jeb.” Borg nodded.

“Smartass,” Smartass said, thumbing her chest as she climbed onto Jeb’s lap.

“So I’ve got a problem,” Jeb said. “Well, humanity as a whole has a pretty big problem, and I need someone who’s sworn to always act in my best interest to talk to about it.”

Borg grabbed a pair of reading glasses from the end table beside him, put them on, crossed his legs and steepled his fingers, every inch the arrogant psychiatrist.

“Tell me about your father.”

“He was adequate.” Jeb shrugged. “Now about this problem. Mab has got a way to swindle humanity out of a huge amount of Myst, rendering them nonmagical in a world where Myst is everything.”

“Which would be a…problem?” Borg asked.

“Humans might figure something out, but without Myst…I’m afraid they would become a slave race. Puppets of the fae.

“And Mab—I know she wouldn’t stop at just Myst. If she got what she wanted from the humans, she would want more, and she would have more power with which to obtain it. She doesn’t stop unless something stops her.”

“So, what are you gonna do about it?” Borg asked.

“I don’t know,” Jeb said, his stomach sinking. “There’s nothing I know of out there that’s powerful enough to force a meeting if she doesn’t want to meet. She’s already got what she wanted, so she’s probably gonna ghost me until after the deed is done.”

Even if Jeb made it back to the same spot in the Death Wilds, there was no guarantee the portal to Elsewyr would be open. It probably wouldn’t.

Mab was going to raise Casey the Third, distorting her perception of humans until taking away their Myst seemed like the right thing to do.

Jeb could picture the abuse at the hands of ‘Myst-crazed humans’ that Mab would arrange just to warp the girl’s mind. It tore apart his insides.

Damnit. Humanity’s royally screwed, and it’s my fault.

Jeb clutched his aching head with his left hand.

“Is that a scroll in your hand, or are you just happy to see me?” Borg asked.

Jeb glanced down and noticed the blue leather clutched tight in his hand, the soft blue leather wrinkling from the pressure.

Jeb took a deep breath.

Fuck it. Let’s find out what the offer was. Can’t be worse than dooming humans to an eternity of servitude.

Jeb unwrapped the loop and opened the scroll.

…

….

It was blank. Nothing but rich blue vellum.

Jeb frowned and unrolled the scroll further and further, revealing nothing but empty space, nearly five feet of blank scroll, until he finally made it to the very end.

OW.

Jeb winced as the headache redoubled, as a short phrase written on the bottom of the scroll was revealed. It was so steeped in potent magic that it felt like sharing a room with a giant.

When it breathed out, Jeb breathed in. He felt like he was dangling on the edge of a bunk bed and the words were his bigger cousin, moments away from shoving him off at any second.

In exchange for these boons, I the undersigned, Jebediah Trapper, agree to become the mortal agent of Kes'thuali, acting in her interest in perpetuity and until the end of time.

Signed and enforced:

Kes'thuali the Destroyer

__________________

Jeb frowned, glanced below the phrase, then above it again. Then below it again.

Then above it.

Aw, crap, I shouldn’t have looked at this.

If Jeb had a way to kill his targets right here and now by signing one little contract, wouldn’t it be his ‘best effort’ to pursue that avenue?

“Damn it,” Jeb muttered, tossing aside the scroll, the back of his mind beginning to itch madly.

This is one of those ‘you sign it, then usher in the end of the world’ type deals. Only an idiot would sign it.

Jeb kind of felt like an idiot at that moment. Still, he didn’t have enough information, and that was an obvious setup.

I need somewhere to lie low while the emperor cools off and I plan how to handle the last of the undead. Somewhere I can get the information I need. Somewhere they would never expect to find me….

Jeb’s brows rose as he figured out the perfect place.

“Come on, we’re going to church,” Jeb said.

“Seriously?” Smartass asked. “Pharosian churches are kinda iffy on whether or not fairies count as people. And Borg is right out.”

Borg shrugged, nonplussed. “I’m incapable of being offended,” he said.

“Yes, seriously,” Jeb reiterated, nodding. “I need to ask this Kes’thuali lady some questions before my ‘best effort’ compulsion overrides my natural inborn desire to stay alive. So let’s go find a priest and ask them some pointed questions.”

There was a tiny bit of gratitude mixed in all the stress and fear; Jeb distinctly remembered that Kes’thuali was the deciding vote that stopped the gods from snuffing him out.

It was hard to put a face to the name, though. Jeb’s memories from the astral plane were…fuzzy, to say the least.

‘The Destroyer’ doesn’t sound pleasant, though. Honestly glad I can’t remember what she looks like. Probably some sort of creepy little girl.

Jeb shuddered.

Borg doctored up Jeb’s features with some self-studied techniques, then the three of them snuck out of the old-lady apartment onto the street. Borg covered his rotting appearance with an old woman’s shawl, and Jeb wore a musty old man’s shirt with ancient suspenders, and did his best to make his gait look as natural as possible.

There was a lot of heat out there tonight for a one-legged man.

Borg, in an act that was both clever and repulsive, hooked his arm through Jeb’s, hunching over and forcing Jeb to take some of his weight, fully embracing the act of a frail old lady.

The smell was just barely within the realm of survivable.

“Do something about your smell, seriously,” Jeb hissed at him.

“I’m literally made of dead flesh. You should be glad that the spell that makes my blood poisonous also slows decomposition,” Borg whispered back.

“Why can’t you just make yourself not dead?” Jeb asked.

“Have you ever heard of the ship of Theseus?” Borg responded.

“I am not getting into a philosophy debate with a robot.”

“If I remove all my undead parts and grant myself organic life…am I still Borg, or merely something that was designed by Borg?”

“Mm-mm,” Jeb said, shaking his head. “I’m not gonna engage with that.”

They continued their theological stand-off until they arrived at the Grand Church of Mestikos.

It was surprisingly more crowded than one might expect, although the reasoning became clear once you thought about it a moment.

From wall to wall, as far as the eye could see, were huddled refugees from the undead plague. A variety of species in the white robes of the priesthood moved among them, speaking to the shelter-seekers, handing out a bit of food here and there.

Those priests have gotta be somewhere between level twenty and level fifty. Otherwise, they wouldn’t be able to protect these people.

It also didn’t escape Jeb’s notice that a large portion of the refugees were human, running the gamut of men, women and children.

Jeb could smell the tinge of undead miasma in the air. It was a foul disease of Impact that claimed the lives of the severely weakened and hopeless.

Like a crowd of densely packed, exhausted, malnourished refugees.

Jeb picked out one of the priests from the crowd, making sure the guy was out of earshot of the others before he approached.

“Greetings,” Jeb said, waving his hand a bit to get the kitri’s attention. The bird’s head swiveled on his long neck to peer at Jeb.

“What can I do for you, sir? You don’t appear to be going through the same difficulty as the others here.”

“Yeah, not exactly. I was just hoping to ask you some questions in exchange for a donation to feed these people,” Jeb said, pressing four bulbs into the priest’s hand. The gold coins glittered for a moment before disappearing into the man’s robes.

“I know how this works, but trust me, I’ll be very disappointed in you if you don’t spend at least half of that on food.”

“Fair enough,” the priest said. “What would you like to ask?”

Jeb motioned to the dozen or so gigantic statues holding up the ceiling, each of them probably depicting a divine being of some kind.

“So, being human, I’m pretty ignorant of Pharosian religion, and I was wondering, which one of these is Kes'thuali the Destroyer?” Jeb asked.

The kitri froze for a moment, his head cocked to the side. “For someone who is ignorant of religion, you sure know some very esoteric names.”

“What does that mean?” Jeb asked.

“It means none of them are The Destroyer. There are no representations of it. Worshiping it is strictly forbidden.”

“Her,” Jeb corrected.

“What?”

“The Destroyer identifies as female.”

“You told me you were ignorant,” the priest said, his words slow and careful.

“I am.”

“…” The kitri’s eyes narrowed as he peered at Jeb.

“So why is it forbidden?” Jeb asked.

“Because it is trying to destroy existence. No person in their right mind would worship a being bent on killing them, nor allow it to be worshiped.”

“Soo…why would a god want to kill their own reality? Did she just get bored with it or something?”

“Gods, you really are ignorant. Kes'thuali is not a god,” the kitri said, his neck trembling in what Jeb could only assume to be righteous indignation.

“Hey, calm down. Have some more gold.” Jeb palmed a couple more bulbs into the priest’s hand.

“Now pick up where you left off.”

The priest pocketed the cash and sighed. “Kes'thuali is not a god. It is a being birthed from the nothingness beyond our reality, with an appetite for destruction. The pantheon of Pharosian gods immediately created a cage of divine power to contain the monster, but they are inadequate to the task of killing it, as it does not have life in the same way a god might.”

“But they gave her a vote,” Jeb said, rubbing his chin. “Is it too much effort to prevent her from attending their meetings? Or are they all trapped in the same cage, so they include her out of pragmatism?”

“Excuse me?”

“Just thinking. How long has Kes'thuali been in a ‘divine cage’?”

“Five thousand years, give or take.”

“And in that time, Kes'thuali has contacted the mortal world…how many times?”

“None,” the priest said with conviction.

“So what you’re saying is, Kes'thuali is…naïve?”

“What?” the priest asked with a confused neck-waggle.

“How confident are you that this information is accurate? Wait, nevermind, you’re a priest.”

“I think you’ve overstayed your welcome,” the priest said.

“Probably,” Jeb said, turning away before shouting over his shoulder so everyone could hear. “Make sure some of that six pieces of gold I donated gets turned into food!”

All the nearby refugees’ ears perked up, some of them literally, as they heard Jeb’s parting words.

“More gold,” Jeb said, holding out his hand. He had more questions to ask.

“I’m more than just a gold-coin-producing machine,” Borg said, another coin slowly manifesting out of pure Myst on his hand. “You know this is an absolute bitch to do because gold is a perfect Myst insulator, right? I have to superheat a microscopic amount of air a fraction of a second before I make another granule so it sticks instead of creating dust—”

“Bup bup bup. Less talky, more bribies,” Jeb said, eyeballing another priest. He was likely to get the same story, but he wanted to cross-check his references just in case the first one left out some details. “First rule of having an extremely valuable skill set is that you run the risk of being forced to do it. That definitely comes with the territory of being able to print money.”

“I’ll keep your words of wisdom in mind and strive for mediocrity,” Borg said.

“You’d probably live longer.”

******

Jeb’s plan was starting to come together when the shit hit the fan.

Panic in a group of people spreads like wildfire, and Jeb could see it rushing toward him. It started with a panicked shout that rose above the crowd:

“They’re at the walls!” came a broken shout from a hoarse throat near the entrance to the grand temple. Then the murmuring, questions and cries of despair pulsed outward from that central location.

“Who’s at what walls?” Jeb muttered, asking pretty much the same thing as everybody else.

“The undead, they’re attacking Mestikos!”

The city? Attacking the city? From outside? Jeb frowned. I need to see this.

Jeb waded through the panicking mass of civilians and ducked outside the massive megachurch, craning his neck towards the sky. There were a handful of the emperor’s fliers, but they mostly seemed to be congregating on the north side of the city, not executing search patterns.

As long as he didn’t draw too much attention to himself, he might be able to catch a glimpse of what was going on.

Jeb flew low, going up to the rooftops, then floating over to the west a ways before heading north, so he wasn’t in the same location as the fliers above the north wall, but he could see what they were seeing.

And it wasn’t good.

There was an army of the dead at the north wall, with a seemingly limitless tide of reinforcements emerging from the river that ran through the center of the city.

They couldn’t make it through the massive metal grate, but that water was sure as hell poisoned at this point.

Mestikos was under siege by a force that required no food or water, and the weaker the defenders became, the more of them would convert to the enemy side. The land sloped north to south, allowing the heavier-than-air miasma to roll across the stone walls, seeking every crack it could find to enter the city and convert the living.

Gravity and time were going to do half their work for them.

Goddamnit, Pikaku’s dad. Even after you’re dead, you’re a pain in my ass.

Jeb’s gaze settled on ten banners among the horde of shambling corpses. The figures around those ten banners looked better equipped, moved more fluidly, and carried themselves with a certain alertness that hinted at their intelligence.

Mestikos had a real bad time ahead of it.

It was right then, when things couldn’t get any worse, that things got a lot worse.

!@(*&$@^())@(&*^@%

Error. Translating foreign Impact….

You have gained an Accolade: Ancient Compact.

Ancient Compact:

A representative of your species has made a binding Deal with a powerful entity.

In exchange for receiving the stewardship of Mab, Fairy Queen, your species has agreed to tithe all of their Myst.

You have partial immunity to this Deal, as you are an unwilling participant and have a similar level of Impact as the signer.

-90 Myst.

Jeb’s Myst, holding him several hundred feet above the palisades, turned into a wet noodle, and he began plummeting to the ground.

“Jesus, fudge, shit!” Jeb shouted as he flailed towards the ground, the wind howling in his ears.

Chapter 29: Catch-22

Jeb bounced off a white stone palisade and tumbled into the empty street, the wind thoroughly knocked out of him.

His Body was still high enough to survive the fall, but it sure as hell wasn’t comfortable.

Jeb rolled to a halt in the middle of the cobbled street, the stinking muck staining his clothes as he groaned, flopping over onto his back. I think I slipped a disc.

“Oooow,” Jeb groaned, fishing in his vest pocket for his trap notebook and pen.

With trembling hands, Jeb jotted down ‘Parachute trap’.

So this is what rock bottom feels like, Jeb thought, staring up into the sky, which had turned grey and cold.

BOOM! There was the sound of an explosion to Jeb’s left.

Jeb turned his head to the left, where the stone walls of the city shed ages of dust as they were finally put to the test against the army of the dead. Even leaderless, their footsteps shook the very ground.

“Daddy, no!”

Jeb turned his head to the right, where he heard the faint snarling of an undead and the grunting struggles of a woman, from the general direction of the church. Their child, not understanding the situation, was trying to talk her dead father out of eating mommy.

Jeb moved to wipe away a clump of what he hoped was mud from his face.

A flash of blue caught his attention.

The scroll was clutched in his right hand, the tendons unnaturally tight, like they’d been struck with rigor mortis. How did I…I just…I thought I threw this thing away. Again. Goddamnit.

Borg’s ugly mug entered Jeb’s view of the sky.

“You alright?” Borg asked.

“I don’t think so,” Jeb said, trying to let go of the scroll and failing miserably.

“Why don’t you just use the scroll to fix everything?”

“How many cautionary tales are there about wishes!?” Jeb demanded, looking up at his rotting companion. “SO MANY! The phrase ‘careful what you wish for’ exists in every human language! What good would it do if I save these people, only to turn around and kill them all because my new boss said so!?” Unknowingly, Jeb’s voice had escalated to a full-blown shout.

“Her title is ‘The Destroyer’, Borg!

“Sooner or later, the irresistible force wins,” Jeb muttered. “And immortal deities are pretty damn close.”

Smartass entered Jeb’s field of vision from the other side.

BOOM!

The walls of the city shuddered again.

“Remember when I was sad, and you cheered me up?” Smartass asked, her brown eyes filled with concern. She hesitantly reached out and patted his shoulder. “There, there.”

Actually, I do remember cheering her up. She was a budding little goth and dropped it within a few hours. It amazes me how quickly fairies change, despite being immortal… Waitaminute.

‘Immortality is a word devised by the short-lived to describe something they don’t understand. But time is relentless. It doesn’t matter how it happens; sooner or later, the pieces align, and entropy will win out.’ —Smartass, facing the inevitable.

Jeb’s eyes widened.

Immortals aren’t irresistible forces. Gods aren’t irresistible forces. Destroyers aren’t either. The only irresistible force is time. Gods used to not exist. They can be created, and they can be changed. Everything can be changed.

Jeb looked up at Borg.

“You look like you just had an idea.”

“Borg, I want you to find me a lawyer.”

“I just passed the bar exam,” Borg said.

BOOM! The ground bucked underneath Jeb and nearly lifted him off the ground.

“When?”

“About a femtosecond after you said you wanted a lawyer,” Borg said, casually flicking something that looked suspiciously like a microchip into the gutter.

Jeb looked down at the blue vellum clutched in a death grip in his hand.

He thought about his Deal.

He thought about all the people out there who needed an end to this, right now. The little girl he’d heard not a minute ago sprang to mind.

He thought about Mab’s smug face…and realized he really didn’t like losing.

“How small can you write?”

“Small enough that wavelengths of light become a factor,” Borg said, a pen and sheet of paper manifesting out of nothing in his hands.

“Excellent.” Jeb leaned forward and poked Borg with the scroll.

Borg raised a brow.

“Just making sure you were still loyal,” Jeb said with a shrug. It never hurts to be paranoid. Besides, he doesn’t have any feelings.

“We’ll start with the broad strokes and work down to the fine details,” Jeb said, pulling out a knife and slicing open his thumb.

When dealing with contracts with evil gods, blood was traditional.

***Emperor Pikaku, Uniter of the Continent, Ruler of Mestikos, Level 329***

“They’ve hidden Iyapiwa among the ten remaining groups,” General Grazoth said, pointing to the ten clusters of intelligent undead on the map. “If the Maiden of Death manages to get the drop on one of our more powerful enforcers—or gods forbid, the emperor himself—that could be enough to tilt the scales entirely in their favor.”

Iyapiwa was a Damsel known for being an assassin before she was sold by her country to the former emperor in a bid to kill him. It hadn’t worked. This was some hundred and fifteen years ago. The Damsel had been very old when she was murdered, but her level had been very high for a Damsel, and her experience in battle was the highest among the Damsels.

They could only watch out for how this skill set might have translated in her undeath.

“The best strategy is to form up our strongest forces and cut off small portions of the undead army using superior mobility, taking them apart one piece at a time.”

“While the miasma does their job for them?” Pikaku asked, his neck strained from the stress of the oncoming assault. “There are low-level commoners already turning out there. The undead need to be purged before they annihilate the city simply by existing. If they’re still out there by nightfall, things will get much worse.”

“With respect, sire, your father’s strategy is still in play, and has leveraged the characteristics of the undead masterfully. If we overcommit and are turned, the death toll will be far higher than a few extra mindless undead. There is no painless way to finish this.”

Pikaku’s eye twitched.

What am I paying you cretins for? he thought, not putting the ungenerous thought to word. Generals were some of the few people he truly had to handle with tact.

Pikaku looked up from the map and glanced over the edge of the wall, where undead were still streaming out of the water, a seemingly limitless river of death.

The river concealed their numbers, protected them from siege weapons, and their decomposing flesh poisoned the city….

Pikaku clenched his beak. There could be a limitless number of reinforcements hiding in the swirling waters. His father knew how to leverage the fear of the unknown.

The ten clusters of corpses had grown to small armies, the mindless undead acting as effective armor that would blunt any assault the remaining forces of Mestikos could launch against them.

By the time the defenders of Mestikos reached the center of the undead army, the attackers would be tired in both Body and Myst, and the intelligent undead would have the advantage.

If they sent the enforcers in ones and twos, in the manner they were accustomed to, there was every chance that they could lose one of their powerhouses to a surprise attack, who might then be turned against them.

The general was correct, but that didn’t make Pikaku less upset.

Perhaps…perhaps I can arrange for some assistance from Vex. The sindio has proven himself willing to bargain.

What we need from our side is a power move that renders father’s tactics meaningless.

Just as Pikaku had that thought, an unease settled over the battlefield like a cloud. As if the light of the gods had been smothered, a warm presence he had known since birth…vanished.

The world went dark, and the clouds parted to reveal that the sun had been consumed by complete blackness, with only a corona of faint light.

Pikaku’s feathers stood on end.

Slowly and reluctantly, the void dripped off the sun, forming a teardrop that descended towards the surface of Pharos on a thread of blackest night.

The teardrop grew to a massive size as it approached, and seemed to be on a direct course to impact Mestikos. Hardened veterans were screaming and looking for a place to hide, while others simply stared, captured by the deadly beauty of the nothingness that was visiting their world.

Pikaku was one of the latter, perfectly aware that there was no place in the city someone could hide. Not from something like that.

Just as the sky had turned completely black, with the only light being from torches and a thin band of residual light from the horizon, the object stopped.

Thousands of droplets the size of a man fell from the darkness above them, radiating an aura of palpable unease. They were connected to the main mass by a thin thread of black, nearly invisible against the backdrop of limitless darkness.

Each place a droplet fell, an undead was engulfed by the darkness and simply ceased to exist.

Pikaku looked up to the sky, trying to see if there was one meant for him, but his eyes were not up to the task of piercing the void.

And as quickly as it came, the void retracted its limbs and withdrew into the sky, gradually vanishing into the distance as the light of the sun returned.

A full-body shiver brought Pikaku to his knees. Where before there had been an army, stood a silent field.

The sounds of alarm and violence that had drifted to his senses from inside the city had ceased as well.

The world was silent. Holding its breath.

“I think something really bad just happened,” Pikaku whispered.

***Queen Mab***

Aw, the little girl’s tuckered out. Irritating.

The girl wasn’t important enough yet for the Deal to influence more than a handful of people, which was fine. Mab had hundreds of years to mold her into someone who would obey without question—someone who hated her own kind, even as she grew ever greater influence over them. The key was a light touch. And making sure none of the horrible things that were going to happen to Casey could be traced back to Mab.

At least, not until after she was completely saturated with hate for her own species. When she thanked Mab for opening her eyes to the evil of humans, despite being through subterfuge, then Mab would know she had succeeded.

Well, the first thing we’re going to need to do is arrange for her mother’s death at the hands of a ‘Myst-crazed’ human lunatic. Her current boyfriend/bodyguard is a good choice. Her silly little constructs thought to set her up with a reliable human male to enhance the woman’s ‘happiness’ and ‘stability’. Fools.

So, how can we drive him insane and cause him to slaughter his girlfriend?

Mab reviewed the background check on the boyfriend while the contemptible child slept.

I’m impressed. Those little homunculi were thorough. Boring, but thorough.

There were no relatives to leverage, his family line was completely free of mental illness…physical too, for that matter. Had a baby sister (dead) that would serve as a binding agent to Casey 3, and was generally a good guy.

Dead sister is fertile grounds. The tragedy that could have bound him to Casey the Third could easily be exploited by one of my specialists.

Mab took a quick mental note, then turned her attention to the next part of the plan: handling the delivery of the information, and making sure the boyfriend died long before Casey got to ask him any question.

Allowing the girl to seek revenge on a specific person could backfire. Better that she see the killer of her mother in every Myst user in the world…save Mab, of course.

An errant breeze flowed in above Mab’s head and gently rang a series of chimes hanging from the ceiling.

Sounds like someone’s at the front door.

Mab created a scrying, a rare honest smile coming to her face as she spotted her grandson standing where the portal to Elsewyr had been, looking adorably frustrated and confused.

Such a cutie.

“What can I do for you, Scion?” she asked, resting her chin on her palm in an unqueenly slouch that no one could see.

Jebediah Trapper turned to face her, and something about the way he stood made her skin crawl. He’s too confident. Far too confident. She also detected that suicidal look Jeb got when he was throwing away his life.

“Hello, Grandma.” Jebediah Trapper paused, seeming to weigh the next words carefully.

“I’m here to tell you that if you don’t do exactly what I tell you to do, you will die.”

Mab blinked.

He’s telling the truth. She’d been around for long enough to spot when someone disturbed ambient Impact with a lie. Not to mention, Jeb would be showing telltale signs of breaking his Word. And yet there were none.

Mab’s hackles rose unbidden as her long-buried animalistic nature stirred in its grave.

What is going on?

Mab turned to her blind manservant, a withered husk of a fae who knew her moods better than she did.

“Giles, will you excuse me? I’ve got to take this.”

***Jebediah Trapper***

“Thanks for inviting me in so quickly,” Jeb said. “It saved me the effort of—”

“Alright, let’s see it,” Mab said, holding out her hand.

“See what?” Jeb asked innocently.

“Whatever you have that makes you think you can threaten ME.”

“It’s nothing too big,” Jeb said, pulling the blue scroll out of his pocket. “It’s just a wish from Kes’thuali the Destroyer.”

“No one gives things away for free. What are the terms?”

“In exchange for these boons, I the undersigned, Jebediah Trapper, agree to become the mortal agent of Kes'thuali, acting in her interest in perpetuity and until the end of time,” Jeb said.

Mab’s eyes widened. “Even you have to know that signing that is a very, very stupid thing to do. Frankly, I don’t think you’re dumb enough to—”

Jeb unrolled the contract and grinned, showing Mab his signature at the bottom of the page, written in blood. Big and bold.

The fairy queen went white as a sheet. “Nevermind,” she said quietly.

“I don’t understand. Why aren’t you trying to destroy all of existence right now?”

“Well, because my part of the agreement is held in abeyance until every part of my wish is fulfilled,” Jeb said, unrolling the entire scroll to reveal what appeared to be a blank scroll dyed brownish red by blood.

In reality, the script was so small and so dense, the naked eye just registered it as a solid color.

Jeb had a few handy cliff notes on the side pointing out various parts of the arrangement.

“This narrow band, here, is what I like to call the ‘Mab’ section,” Jeb said, pointing out a band of script about three inches wide. “You should be proud. You’ve got the second-widest section of any being on here.

“There are several hundred clauses, but the broad strokes are this:

“If you don’t do everything I tell you, the literal God of Destruction is going to be given express permission to destroy you, Elsewyr, and your entire court. And frankly, I don’t think the other gods would bother to interfere. In fact, I KNOW they won’t. They really want you dead, and the wish is very specific. There won’t be any collateral damage. It’s a win-win for me and the gods.

“If you ever try to manipulate Casey the Third again...you die.

“If you ever try to manipulate me: You die.

“If I ever state a desire for you to die: You die.

“And a few hundred other things that I’m just gonna let you figure out on your own,” Jeb said, rolling the scroll back up. “Let’s just say you should be on your best behavior from now on.”

Mab had a shell-shocked, thousand-yard stare. “What about the corrupted Myst? My people are going to die.”

“That reminds me,” Jeb said. “Say ‘thank you for saving my people’.”

“‘Thank you for saving my people’,” Mab gritted through clenched teeth.

Abhorrent but restrained power oozed into their reality, passing through Elsewyr like a sonic boom. In the distance, Jeb could make out the anguished screams of fae being purified. The god of destruction had been given permission to burn the corruption away.

“Say ‘I owe you my life and those of my people’,” Jeb continued.

Mab’s eyes widened again. They both knew what would happen if a being like her said a thing like that.

“That’s extortion!”

“Extortion has never been against fairy rules,” Jeb said with a shrug. “Like kidnapping children and brainwashing them. Say it now.”

“I owe you my life and those of my people,” Mab said, her expression vaguely reminiscent of a Japanese Oni mask.

“You do, don’t you?” Jeb asked.

Jeb’s entire body began to throb with Impact. He felt his whole body bubbling up like Coke and Mentos. It made the ninety Myst he’d lost look weak by comparison. Jeb didn’t want to put a number on it, but…a lot.

“Now, I’m going to be nice and allow you to partially repay your substantial debt to me for saving your people… Nullify your Deal with Casey the Third. You. Evil. Witch.”

Mab’s eye twitched. “Deal.” In an instant, Jeb no longer felt like he was going to explode with Impact, as it settled down to a more tolerable quantity. He could still taste the magic though, feel it pressing behind his eyeballs.

“Yep. Feels good to help people,” Jeb said, slipping the scroll into his coat pocket. “You still owe me your life, though. I specifically instructed The Destroyer not to kill you after signing the document, after all. As long as you behave.”

“You remind me of your grandfather,” Mab said, eye twitching violently as her cheeks flushed with pure rage.

“Oh, one more thing,” Jeb said.

“What?”

“Send Casey the Third back to her mother immediately.”

“To repay my debt?”

Jeb smirked. “Because you’ll die if you don’t.”

***Astral Plane***

The gods laughed uproariously.

“It’s not funny!” Kes'thuali shouted, stomping in place, which spurred them to laugh harder.

“Listen, listen to this,” Erron, God of Masculine Vigor said, catching his breath between giggles, clutching Kes'thuali’s copy of the scroll in his hands. “Jebediah’s end of the bargain will be held in abeyance until Kes'thuali fulfills every clause. Number one, Kes'thuali must destroy the world…at the exact moment the sun goes supernova.”

They broke into laughter.

“Okay, okay, number two: Kes'thuali must become a fully recognized part of the pantheon and obey its rules until the end of time. She will be known as Kes’thuali the Destroyer…of Evil. The pantheon in turn can assign Kes’thuali people, places or things to be destroyed, with the exception of those exempt in this contract. Kes’thuali retains the right to refuse to destroy anything or anyone.

“There’s literally tens of thousands of these!” Erron said, scrolling down the list.

“Check this one out. Kes'thuali must live as a mortal once every hundred years, retaining none of her memories or power. The memories of their lives are retained when Kes'thuali’s mortal shell dies and they return to the divine.”

“Oof, that sucks!” another god chimed in.

“I am the DESTROYER OF REALITIES! Give me back my scroll!” Kes'thuali shrieked.

“I think we can consider this your first lesson as an official god of the Pharos Pantheon: Never…ever give someone a blank wish,” the god of knowledge said.

“Especially not a fae,” Murkos the Scarred said, nodding.

“You all suck!” Kes'thuali shouted at the top of her lungs before she stormed away, slamming the door on the divine hall with an echoing BOOM.

Once the laughter died down, the mood sobered.

“Should we consider his Quest completed?” Venaxus the Weaver asked. “He didn’t kill Mab, but the restraints that have been placed on Kes'thuali by her own hand have spared us an even greater amount of power than we would have gained if the fae queen had died.”

“He did not do as he was asked, and it seems he will continue to be disobedient. We should not reward this,” Erron said.

There was a general murmur of agreement.

“Very well, we will withdraw our offer and allow him to die.”

“Hey guys?” Nixus asked, the body made of spiraling galaxies and stardust difficult to read as he stared down into the mortal plane.

“Eh?” Erron grunted.

“Where did the bomb go?”

Chapter 30: The Other Shoe Drops

“What’s the point of buying a prosthetic that you can put a shoe on?” Jeb asked. “Why not just make it tough enough to walk on cobblestones without splintering? Some steel and rubber is all I really need,” Jeb said as he turned the fancy reproduction of a foot over in his hands. It even had articulating toes so he could make them flip someone off if he had to.

“It’s not just about durability,” Vresh said, holding another prosthetic up to his arm to check the skin tone. “It’s about cleanliness. You buy a matching set of shoes for it, you take them off when you come inside so the servants don’t have to clean up muddy one-footed tracks.”

“Heh, servants,” Jeb muttered, shaking his head.

“How about this one?” Jeb asked, holding up a particularly gaudy example, ivory embedded with gold inlay. “It’s got a surprising amount of storage space.”

“You told me yourself, and I quote, ‘I keep breaking my damned fake feet. I need to find some that will last.’ Does gold inlay strike you as a high priority?” she asked.

“You never know. Someday some ruffian could see my fancy foot and decide I’m a cool dude, worth going easy on.”

“More likely they’d mark you as a target to rob.”

“True.” Jeb’s eyes wandered to the left until his gaze landed on something spectacular.

“What is that?” he breathed, pointing at a heavy, dark blue steel peg with a sole made of a fist-sized chunk of faradan with Myst visibly pulsing through it.

“No,” Vresh said.

“No, what?” Jeb asked.

“No, it’s not a good choice.”

“But, but, it’s so cool!” Jeb said, picking it up off the shelf and turning it over in his hand. He tried pressing against the faradan, but the invisible force of the stone pushed his hand away. There was a sticky sort of tactile sensation that transferred force through the invisible field. Jeb guessed that was what the enchantment did.

“It won’t get dirty; it doesn’t even touch the ground!” he exclaimed.

“First of all, check the price tag,” Vresh said.

Jeb glanced down and hissed like he’d been burned.

“That’s not…a complete dealbreaker.” Damn thing almost costs as much as the orphanage.

“How’s this, then: It’s actually less durable than a standard wooden leg. A light shock from the side can crack the faradan stone and render it completely useless. It also doesn’t have any of your coveted ‘storage space’, since the core is entirely filled with faradan to support your weight. It also isn’t rated for any more than two hundred and fifty pounds. If you were to try to lift something more than a hundred pounds, you run the risk of breaking it.”

“If I may,” the salesman interjected. “Despite these caveats, the ‘air-peg 2000’ is reported to be the most comfortable walking experience many of our clients have ever had. Because it never touches your skin, it eliminates the chafing and sores that other pegs might cause.”

“Oooh, that sounds nice, but…the ‘air-peg two thousand’?” Jeb asked, frowning.

“My boss makes me say it,” the merchant said apologetically.

“Most of us have been there,” Jeb said, nodding.

“Jeb, you have enough Body. You won’t get sores.”

“The peg doesn’t know that,” Jeb replied.

“Here, this is what you want,” Vresh said, handing him a foot that looked something like if peanut brittle had been made out of bubbling crude oil. The surface was rough and bumpy, black and a bit shiny.

“The heck is this made out of?” Jeb asked, setting aside the ultra-expensive leg.

“It’s—”

“Bedrock beetle,” Vresh interrupted the salesman. “It’s a giant beetle that grows in tropical locations. They do well in captivity, and the Sh’kethis export their shells to the north. They are often used as structural reinforcement and low-grade armor. It’s cheap, light, and very tough.”

“How do they kill them, if they’re so tough, then?” Jeb asked, rapping the foot with his knuckles. It was hard, but had a bit of give to it.

“Carbon monoxide poisoning.”

“Ah. Feels like that was a stupid question,” Jeb said, checking the interior of the foot. “Oh my, that is a lot of storage space. I could keep a pint of hooch in here.”

“Please don’t.”

“I’m kidding. It’ll probably be an illegal weapon.”

The salesman glanced between him and Vresh nervously. “Sir and madam, we don’t condone the alteration of our products in a manner inconsistent with the law.”

“If your boss asks, just lie about what I said, because I’m not gonna,” Jeb said, hefting the foot. “What is that, half a pound? I like it.”

“Once we get the alabaster spackle smoothing over the outside, you can be seen in public with it.”

“What do I need the spackle for? I could be seen in public with this.”

“But it looks awful,” Vresh countered. “Commoners and mercs wear it for armor.”

“Well, now look at who’s suddenly concerned with appearances,” Jeb said, crossing his arms and raising a brow. “I’ll have you know that appearances are fluid. And if I get famous enough, shell-based accessories could eventually be in vogue.”

“That’s a lot of ‘if’s and ‘could’s,” Vresh pointed out.

“Just two. Also, I don’t particularly care what your son thinks about my taste in feet.”

“Please do not call my uncle my son.”

“I mean, according to the law…”

Vresh’s eyes narrowed.

“Yes’m.” Jeb shut his mouth and re-organized his brain so as not to make that joke again. Tease a girl once and it’s funny, but it’s a fine line to walk between endearing and annoying.

Jeb intended to walk that line. Jeb wanted their first official, legally expedient date to go swimmingly.

How it became shopping for feet was a bit of a head-scratcher. Jeb had planned an afternoon of kicking ass, followed by a spa treatment and dinner. But Vresh had other ideas, and had dragged him off to shop for feet.

Did she enjoy shopping for fake feet? Shopping in general? Or was it because she liked him and wanted him to benefit from their date? All of the above? None?

Jeb wasn’t exactly the best judge of women’s intentions, which was why he operated on a conservative dating policy of not overextending himself until he knew what was actually going on.

Jeb checked the price tag on the beetle-shell foot and blinked. Damn, she was right. That is cheap.

“Can I get five of these made?” Jeb asked.

“Of course, sir. Let me just get your measurements.” The clerk pulled a measuring tape off his shoulder and got the measurements of Jeb’s legs in a handful of seconds, scurrying off to the back of the store.

“So I’ve been wondering,” Jeb said once the salesman was out of earshot. “Why a prosthetic store? I mean, I understand why you’d take me, but not why you’d take me.”

Vresh smiled. “You would have bought the ‘air-peg’ and bankrupted yourself.”

“That’s not…guaranteed,” Jeb hedged, unable to deny her assertion completely.

She laughed, then the amusement slipped away. “Haggling and shopping with you is so much less stressful than dealing with my family.”

She leaned up against the wall and cocked her head. “As for why we’re having a date here?” She waved her hand to encompass the shop. “None of my immediate family members are missing any limbs. They’ll find it much harder to justify spying on us, like they would’ve if we’d gone anywhere else. Although, I suppose I wouldn’t be surprised if he cut one of my cousin’s hands off just to get in the door.”

“I was under the impression we were supposed to be putting on a show for your family,” Jeb said. “Makes it harder if they can’t surveil us.”

“Just for this date, I’d rather have fun.” Her piercing look made Jeb’s heart stutter in his chest.

“Are you having fun?” Jeb asked.

She seemingly rolled the thought around in her head. “Hmm…reduced stress, no responsibilities, mildly entertained by your tomfoolery. I suppose I could call this ‘fun’.”

“Screw you,” Jeb muttered.

“Oh? Screw me? Are you even capable of that?” Vresh leaned forward, her blouse shifting distractingly as she placed her lips next to his ear. Jeb could feel heat radiating out of her like an oven, beating against the side of his face like the desert sun.

“Tonight, I want you to plunge your fingers in the flame of a candle for as long as you can and think of my…heat,” she whispered, giving him goosebumps and a shiver straight down his spine.

“God-damn, you were supposed to be here to make it easier for me to walk,” Jeb said, grateful for his long overcoat as Vresh pulled away, her velvety laugh making things worse.

I’m probably gonna try that, though, now that she put the idea in my head. Damnit.

“You’re a confusing specimen,” Vresh said. “Most people aren’t attracted to people outside their species. At least, the normal ones.”

“I would claim to have a special attraction to you, but I won’t lie: I’m fairly sure most humans find you very hot.”

“Ah, a double entendre,” she said, nodding sagely.

“They’re so hard to do now because of this vow,” Jeb grumbled.

“There, there,” Vresh said, patting him on the shoulder. “I’m sure you’ll be able to make puns again one day.”

“It might be sooner than you think.” A familiar voice from Jeb’s left made his hair stand on end. And not in the good way, like a moment ago.

Jeb’s neck creaked as he turned it to face a seven-foot-tall skeletal monster in black robes with gold runes covering them from top to bottom—the most dangerous keegan he’d ever had the displeasure of meeting in person.

Magically, he made Jeb seem like a squalling infant.

“…What are you doing here?” Jeb asked as he felt Vresh tense beside him, her body heat flaring up as the adrenaline hit her system.

“Shopping,” Vex said with a shrug, plucking the ‘air-peg’ off the shelf, snorting before putting it carefully back. The man was fastidious. Like the Unabomber.

“Shopping for what?”

“An apprentice. Svel’tor got an apprentice fifteen years ago, and she won’t shut up about it. So she ‘founded a nation’ and ‘raised a country out of the ocean itself,’” Vex said, making air quotes. “Her grandstanding makes me sick. Just wait until I wave you in her face.”

“…How about no?” Jeb asked.

“The man with The Destroyer on a leash,” Vex said, ignoring Jeb. “And that was before I taught you what to do with it.”

“I don’t have The Destroyer on a leash.”

Vex paused, mouth open. His tube-like tongue waggled in his mouth for a moment before he closed it and cocked his head.

“What do you mean?”

“I didn’t give myself any direct control over The Destroyer,” Jeb responded. “There are many, many clauses in the contract that state that neither of us are to interact with the other. Direct control over The Destroyer would give her a chance to interact with and potentially sabotage me through communication and her interpretation of my commands. No, the primary goal of the contract was to subject The Destroyer to astronomical levels of behavioral therapy.”

“So you…can’t…wipe entire countries off the map by unleashing the monster the gods themselves fear?”

“That would be stupid,” Jeb said. “If I could do that, someone like you would immediately swoop in and turn me into a mind-controlled puppet. I can picture you thinking about it right now. Let me reiterate. I. Have. No. Control. Over. The. Destroyer.”

“What if you wished Mab was dead?” Vex asked, leaning against the counter and seeming more amused than Jeb had anticipated.

“It’s not really control at all. More like…The Destroyer universally wants to destroy everything. The contract prevents her from destroying a long list of things, and the gods are the final arbiters of everything that’s not on the list. If I say the word, the gods become aware that Mab is not on that list, and can then make their own decisions.”

“So in essence…you let The Destroyer off her leash.”

“Nope, the gods are the ones doing that. I have no control over what they do with the information.”

“But you know exactly what they’ll do.”

“Not if the behavioral therapy works,” Jeb said with a shrug.

“Ahahaha!” Vex broke into uproarious laughter.

“Jebediah Trapper, you are the most cunning and paranoid person I have met that isn’t clinically insane. Wonderful. You passed the test.”

Jeb’s skin went cold. “Test. What test?”

“I can’t have strings attached to my apprentice from day one, you know. You handled that contract about as well as could be expected. No strings.”

“I never agreed to be your apprentice,” Jeb said.

“…True…” Vex twiddled his thumbs, a delicate play of multicolored Myst spinning around them. “I’ve seen you working with the fingerpaints the ‘gods’ hand down to mortals and I’m impressed at what you’ve done with them, but it’s still fingerpainting.

“Wanna learn some real fuckin’ magic?”

Jeb frowned, his lips pursed, glancing at Vresh, whose jaw was clenched tight.

“Just because he’s the evil sack of shit that killed my father doesn’t mean it’s not a good offer. That…thing is a literal creature of legend, and if the apprenticeship offer is legitimate, it’s a clear path to greatness,” Vresh said, her eyes narrowed. “Although, if you accept the apprenticeship, I’d appreciate it if you attempted to kill him at least once.”

“Noted,” Jeb said, turning back to Vex, who was glancing at Vresh. “What about the bomb? Are you going to take it out or what?”

“Oh, that?” Vex waved his hand dismissively. “That went off already.”

“Bwa?” Jeb stumbled over his words. “But I’m still alive.”

“Yes, nuclear bombs have a habit of creating untold destruction and upending the world order. Like devastating a capital city…or making a superpower behave itself.”

“Wait… The contract was the bomb?” Jeb asked, his mind bending at the sheer weirdness of the fifth dimension and how it interplayed with the real world.

“Excellent leap of intuition. Kes’thuali’s contract was the bomb resurfacing in the real world. Object of Terrible Power goes in, Object of Terrible Power comes out. It’s the law of Conservation of Meaning. I’ve got a book on the mechanics of it in my study—which you would have access to, if you were my apprentice.”

“…Fine,” Jeb said. “I’ll be your apprentice.” I probably don’t have much of a choice anyway.

“Excellent!” Vex said, clapping his skeletal hands together in glee. “Not that you had a choice, but your willingness to participate will make the whole process much more pleasant.”

“It’s when you say stuff like that, it makes me question my decision,” Jeb said, eyes narrowed.

“You’ll get used to it. Now let’s…” Vex opened his mouth, then glanced at Vresh, who was still glaring at him. “Actually, how does tomorrow afternoon work for you? I do have some lessons to plan, after all.”

Is this guy seriously being considerate of my date? How does he go from ‘you had no choice’ to ‘I’ll leave you kids to it’? Jeb wondered for a moment before he answered.

“That’s fine.” It wasn’t like Jeb had a nine-to-five. He mostly freelanced.

Just as quickly as he arrived, the ancient sindio vanished, disappearing in a cocoon of pinkish Myst that warped the fabric of spacetime.

“So,” Jeb said, turning back to Vresh. “You wanna—”

“Give me a minute,” Vresh said in a strangled voice, her eyes watering, jaw clenched. A moment later, she glanced back down at Jeb.

“I had fun,” she said, turning to the door and marching out at top speed.

Jeb crossed his arms as he watched his date storm out onto the street, wiping her eyes with her sleeve. Yep. The universe conspired to screw my date over.

Vresh probably needed time to process Jeb working with the guy who killed her dad on principle because her uncle, who was now her son, refused to pay his ransom and let him die.

Her and me both.

Well, she did have fun right up until the end. Should I be the one who asks for a second date? It’s this kind of shit that I have no idea how to handle.

Dating before the Stitching had not prepared him for this level of complexity.

Or maybe it’s just my life that’s complicated… I wonder if I should pick something up on the way home for the orphans or the mad scientist that lives in my basement?

…Yeah, it’s my life. Damnit.

Author’s note:

If you’ve made it this far, you’re a hero! I appreciate every person who reads and enjoys my work. I started this series entirely out of spite at the prevalence of Muscle-wizards and main characters who solve their problems by working harder, not smarter. It’s taken on quite a life of its own since.

Since this is book 4, you probably already know about my Royalroad page, where quite a few of my rough stories are up for free. If you didn’t, please, check it out! I’m sure you’ll find something you enjoy! Heck, try out the site as a whole. I highly recommend it for free reading.

And of course, no author’s note would be complete without a Patreon link. This is where my newest works are being published as they’re written, on a chapter-by-chapter basis. If you’re one of those incredibly impatient folks (like me), then you can check it out, and get in line as early as six months ahead of the public.
And there’s even stuff there that’s never been released to the public, if you know where to look… *sinister hand-wringing*

Now that that’s taken care of, I’d like to thank my wife, my editor, my sister, my parents, and my deep-seated distaste for fictional characters who choose might over magic when magic is an option. You’ve made me the author I am today, and I am thankful for it.