Chapter 5: Finishing The Job (Patreon)

Jeb opened his mouth to speak.

“Before you say anything,” Svek said, motioning to his rather large gold earring, “I have ways of knowing if you’re telling the truth. If you lie to me, I will kill you and toss your body down the mountainside. Understood?”

Jeb tried and failed to choke down a giggle.

“What’s funny?”

“I never had any intention of lying to you from the start,” Jeb said, chuckling.

“Interesting. What are you doing here?”

“Mark asked me to deliver a message for him. Said it paid well.” Jeb said. This statement was completely true, although Mark had said those words at gunpoint. Mark had said a lot of things at gunpoint to make Jeb’s infiltration easier.

“And your name?”

“It’s Jebediah Trapper.”

“Do you know what this is?” Svek asked, showing Jeb the ring.

“Can’t say that I do.”

“That’s odd, considering it has your name on it.”

Svek’s eyes unfocused for an instant as he looked at the ring with the whirling mist.

“Bestowed upon Jebediah Trapper by Nixus as a reward for outstanding performance during the Impossible tutorial.” The melas said, eyes darting as he read something in front of his eyes.

“I knew the humans had completed the Impossible tutorial, but I never expected to meet one, I certainly never expected one to be as weak as you. Shouldn’t you be hunting reapers for the emperor or sipping C’lackcha on a beach somewhere? By all accounts, the people who made it out of the Impossible tutorial are forces to be reckoned with.”

“How did you wind up powerless on my doorstep?” Svek grinned, looming over Jeb.

“Well, there was a whole…thing where some of the gods thought I had cheated, but they didn’t have provisions in place, so they just voted to take away my access to the System as punishment.”

“Cheated?” Svek interrupted. “How?”

“By being underhanded. I exploited a weakness in the Treasure reward system to go back in time and finish the tutorial within the unfair time limit, creating a paradox that the gods had to clean up. They didn’t seem pleased about that.”

“You met them personally?”

“Well, I wouldn’t say met. More like I sat there while they talked over my head.”

“What happened next?”

“After that, I didn’t have access to the System, so I slummed around in Kalfath for a couple months, trying to live like a civvie until my PTSD started acting up, then Mark told me I could make a couple silver if I ran a message for him.”

Jeb left some parts out, but none of it was a lie.

“A couple silver!?” Svek asked with a chortle, slapping his knee in amusement.

“Do you know how much this is worth!?” He asked, holding the ring out.

“I do not,” Jeb grumbled, “But I imagine it’s probably worth a lot more than that.”

“This is an appraiser. By itself, it’s probably worth five hundred bulbs. To a collector, it’s likely worth far more than that, since it’s a unique relic that has literally been touched by a deity.”

“Appraiser?” Jeb asked.

Svek inhaled deeply and pursed his lips, bringing the ring to his face. He blew hard into the center of the ring, causing a billowing cloud of grey Myst to shoot out, roiling across Jeb’s body.

Wherever it landed, his flesh glowed and pulsed from the inside, and for an instant, Jeb felt like he was looking at himself through x-rays.

A moment later, the roiling grey Myst recoiled away from him, leaving his body and condensing into a simple screen with writing on it. Jeb could read it easily, even though it was backwards, the text facing the bearer of the ring.

Jebediah Trapper

Mystic Trapsmith, Level 39

Accolades: Krusker’s Brawn, Siren’s Cunning, R-R-RubU’s Mysteries, Gresh’s Subtlety, Innovator, Lagross’s Power.

Body 21 5

Myst 71 5

Nerve 26 8

Abilities: Mystic Trigger

Accolade Pending: Lagross’s Power suspended due to multiple instances. Awaiting resolution by Admin.

Attention, this User has been flagged for exclusion from the System by executive order.

I wonder how I managed to retain five Myst, Jeb thought, noting the one difference between now and his starting Attributes. Maybe he’d had that Impact stick to him, like Smartass had mentioned, or maybe he exercised it like a muscle.

He needed to figure out how to get more.

Svek broke into a laugh.

“You weren’t shitting me!” He exclaimed, brows raised in amusement. “You really don’t have the System!”

The pirate leaned forward and studied the numbers closely, his pitch black fingernail tapping the top of his knee.

“Attributes like that, you could’ve killed everyone in my camp. God-damn. That’s a respectable spread even before you add the Myst. Seventy-one!? You must have seen some wild shit!”

“I talked to a mountain, once upon a time,” Jeb said, glancing at the ring. “You’re not gonna give that back, are you?”

“Jebediah, I’ll do you one better,” Svek said, tucking the ring in his pocket, confirming Jeb’s suspicions. “How would you like a job?”

“Is this a job where I have a choice?” Jeb asked.

“Of course you have a choice,” Svek said with a grin. “Death is always a choice. Most people don’t choose it, but hey.” The giant shrugged. “If you want to spend the night getting disemboweled, who am I to stop you?”

“What kind of job?” Jeb asked.

“What’s your impression of Mark?”

“He’s young and a little dumb.” Jeb said with a shrug. “Not deal-breakers.”

“He’s an idiot. He gave someone else the password when I specifically told him not to. I can’t abide that. He’ll be gone by the end of the week.

“You, though. You I can use. I need someone in town who can do more than just pass messages. I need someone with experience, who can think on their feet, someone with survival skills. Someone willing to get their hands dirty to survive. You strike me as a survivor.”

“A survivor who couldn’t possibly hurt you?” Jeb asked.

“Exactly,” Svek said, putting a hand on Jeb’s shoulder and reaching over him to untie the rope around his wrists. Tying Jeb up was about as meaningless as tying up a puppy.

I wish I still had my Myst traps, Jeb thought with a scowl. He would have had a lot more options if he could just point a finger and kill people or cut the ropes off with a few well-timed winks.

Unfortunately they’d all been torn apart in the Great Screwening.

Still, seeing his own status again was heartening. It wasn’t gone, just blocked. And there was some proof that he had ways of improving it, too.

Matter of fact, when Jeb started without the training wheels, he could barely move grains of sugar with his mind, now he was up to about half a pound.

Which was huge, considering Jeb was Au Natural telekinetic.

Seeing my status again? Jeb frowned, having a sudden epiphany. The ring had been given to him specifically so he could see his status. There might even be more to it than that.

At least one of the gods wasn’t down with screwing me over, I guess, Jeb thought as he was hauled to his foot.

Jeb hopped in place for a moment before Svek tossed him his pegleg.

“Now what was your message?” The giant melas asked, slouching back in his throne.

“Boney Pete got arrested.” Jeb said.

“What!?” Svek roared, leaning forward, his teeth bared like an animal.

Jeb took a step back as heat began to radiate off the horned creature like an oven.

“When did this happen?” he demanded.

“About two hours ago.” Jeb said.

Svek growled for a moment, deep in the back of his throat as he slowly relaxed his posture. “I guess we’ve got your first job, don’t we.” He said. “Spring Pete, and you’ll be well compensated. Boys, send him back.”

Jeb’s heart thudded heavy in his chest as he eyed the mountain tyrant. He hadn’t seen the location of their base, he hadn’t figured out where they were keeping the girl…He had nothing. If he allowed himself to be carted off, he might actually wind up being a stooge for a local crime lord.

It was time to risk a little murder. Hopefully Svek wasn’t impulsive enough to kill him here, on account of the mess.

“I don’t really want to do that.” Jeb said.

Svek guffawed. “You don’t have a choice, little human.

Jeb cocked a brow.

“Didn’t you say so yourself? Everyone’s got a choice.”

“You sure about that?” Svek asked him, letting the question hang in the air, along with all it implied.

“Here’s as good a place as any,” Jeb shrugged, acting far more nonchalant than he actually was. His heart was slamming in his chest, and his shivering nerves were telling him to run with everything he had.

“Okay then.”

Svek rose out of his throne, grabbed Jeb by the shoulder and guided him out of the yurt like a disobedient toddler. There wasn’t a single thing Jeb could do about it, so he didn’t bother struggling, letting himself be dragged out into the open.

Jeb squinted as firelight pierced his dilated pupils.

The camp was pretty much like he expected. A bunch of melas criminals sitting around a campfire, drinking.  The fire was set in a recessed dip in the ground so the light didn’t spread beyond the immediate vicinity of the camp.

There were half a dozen hide yurts set up around the camp, where the outlaws presumably slept on the job. Strangely, Jeb spotted some constructions moored downhill that looked a little bit like bayou airboats.

Jeb glanced at the moon and down at the slope and figured they were on a slope of the Split mountains facing away from the city of Kalfath, further ensuring it couldn’t be seen from the city.

Off to the side, Jeb spotted Smartass waving for his attention violently, pointing down to the yurt she was hiding in. They were playing it safe in case one of the outlaws had enough Myst to be a problem, so she was half hidden on the ceiling of one of the leather constructions, ducking behind the furry edge of a hide.

Even if a Myst user could see a fairy, they were small. Hiding came naturally to them.

Jeb glanced down at the Yurt she was pointing to and made a note of it, mentally signaling the butterfly cavalry to start its approach.

The only reason Smartass would point to a yurt would be if their rescue target were in it.

Now that Jeb knew where the girl was, he could bring the swarm of Void butterflies in and tear these people apart with impunity. The only problem was it would take a minute for the black swarm to orient themselves above the camp then swoop directly down in an inescapable mass.

Butterflies could only fly at about twelve miles per hour, after all.

Svek’s meaty palms wrenched Jeb to the left, changing his view drastically. In a matter of seconds, he was face to face with an ugly wooden X in a clearing near the center of camp. It was made of thick wood poles with thick steel restraints designed to subdue people a lot stronger than Jeb.

The restraints themselves were covered in blood and bits of gore. Flies buzzed around the base of the wood angrily as the lumbering sapients got close enough to make the greedy insects nervous.

Well, that doesn’t look good, Jeb thought, suddenly very invested in figuring out how quick a butterfly could cross a distance of a mile.

Five minutes! Holy shit! A lot can happen in five minutes!

“Gather round!” Svek called, gathering the attention of the surrounding pirates, who were distracted from their general rowdiness by the call. Standing up and peering at the short little monkey their leader had in his grip.

“This gentleman has volunteered to be the evening’s entertainment.”

He glanced down at Jeb, malicious pleasure glittering in his eyes.

“Jebediah, you’ve got some balls since surviving the impossible Tutorial. Maybe we should start with those.”

Stall for time, Jeb thought desperately as rough hands grabbed his arms and legs, hoisting him up onto the sticky wood. His heart was beating so hard he could barely hear the jeering of the pirates.

“Come to think of it, springing Boney Pete isn’t the worst thing,” Jeb said. He didn’t have to add the tremor of fear as they secured the restraint. It was already there.

“Jebediah, my friend,” Svek said, twisting a wickedly curved knife out of the wood of the restraints. “I learned a lesson long ago from my dear departed father, I’ve lived by it my entire career, and it’s served me very well. Want to hear what it is?”

“No, but I bet I will anyway.” Jeb muttered, tugging on the restraints.

“Never, ever let someone say ‘no’ to you twice. Everyone who ever has wound up sitting right where you are now. And guess what? Not very many people say no to me.”

The towering Melas put the hook of the knife in Jeb’s collar and yanked down, splitting his brand-new clothes down the center.

Sonofabitch.

“H-hold on!” Jeb said, mind awhir as the hooked blade approached his pants. “How about a deal?”

“I think we’re past that.”

“Seriously! I could tell you the secrets of how to form a Myst Core! How about that? In exchange…”

Motion caught the corner of Jeb’s eye, and he spotted one of the pirates emerging curiously from the yurt with their captive in it. The man was obviously straightening his pants, sending a lance of cold realization through Jeb’s chest.

They were hurting her.

It felt like some huge, ugly hand in Jeb’s guts flipped a gigantic switch from Flight to Fight, bringing laser focus and numbing the fear down to nothing.

“…I’ll take your lives.”

Svek burst into an uproarious laugh that rippled through the surrounding men. Even the rapist joined in the laughter as he approached, although he was clearly not in on the joke.

“Sure.” The towering melas said, still chuckling a bit. “Let’s hear it.”

Click.

Jeb felt something inside him lock into place, and he started spilling his guts, everything he knew about Myst cores and how to make them.

It felt uncontrollable and reflexive, like information vomit.

He gave them everything: From the techniques that the fairies had taught him to gather and condense Myst, to his own personal observations on the nature of cores and how they represented the user’s ideal power, his notes on the physics of Myst and lensing effects, only stopping when he’d run out of things to say.

“Damn,” one of the pirates said from close to the back once he was done.

That’s five minutes. Jeb thought, glancing up at the sky, where the stars were blocked out by the cloud of void butterflies hovering above them, just out of sight.

Jeb glanced back down, and he saw the calculation in Svek’s widened eyes as he regarded him. He knew exactly what the pirate captain was thinking.

How could he possibly allow that kind of information to be disseminated among his crewmembers? There was a good chance one of them would use it to make themselves strong enough to challenge his leadership, or outright kill him.

Svek had to take control of the situation, and that boded poorly for Jeb.

“NNG!” Jeb strangled back a scream as the knife sank into his stomach, so much more painful because there was nothing he could do about it.

“He’s lying,” Svek said, turning away from Jeb to address the rest of his crew. “The cripple doesn’t know the first thing about Myst. He’s a dumbass who lost his leg in the Normal Tutorial, nothing more. If I see you sitting on your ass with your legs crossed and eyes closed, I’ll rip out your spine.”

There was one more thing Jeb had to do. It came to him instinctively. He’d acted in good faith. He had to give them an opportunity to fulfil their side of the bargain.

He forced air through his throat, trying not to tense the blazing muscles in his stomach as he spoke.

“My…payment?” Jeb gasped.

“Here’s your payment,” Svek said, turning back to Jeb and twisting the knife, forcing howl out of Jeb’s lungs. Through the tears in his eyes, Jeb spotted Smartass perched on his right arm, loosening the bonds on his arms until a simple flick would open them.

“Didn’t you say he was in the Impossible tutorial?” one of the dumber pirates near the back asked.

“Who said that!?” Svek demanded, whirling to scan the cowed mass.

Now.

Jeb gave the mental marching orders to the butterflies as he breathed in, siphoning Myst out of his Core and creating a slender thread of telekinetic energy.

He flicked the bonds open on his wrists in a fraction of a second, while Smartass leapt between his legs, tossing them open.

“What the Roil is that?” A pirate said, pointing straight up at the veritable wall of butterflies descending onto the camp.

Jeb landed on his knees, desperately muscling down the urge to scream as the blade wobbled in his guts. He wasn’t out of the woods yet. He rolled away and began crawling as fast and quiet as he could, the noise masked by the increasingly alarmed cries of the outlaws.

“Attack!” Svek screamed. The pirate lord was much faster on the uptake than his men, and he whirled back around, swinging his thick black nails through the air where Jeb’s jaw had rested, taking a chunk out of the wood itself.

Jeb directed the butterflies to sink down around him faster as Svek stepped around the torture restraints.

Maybe if he’d gone through them, he would have arrived in time. The extra second it took to move the giant’s bulk gave Jeb enough time to bring the butterflies down around himself like a protective barrier.

All through the camp, the sound of stunned pirates getting chunks torn out of them grew to a fever pitch.

Mostly the screaming.

Jeb was hoping the pirate captain would try to dive through the wall of butterflies and put himself out of Jeb’s misery, or wait until the rest of them collapsed in on the center of the formation and tore the guy to shreds.

Predictably, the pirate chose the least polite option. The giant dug the front of his foot into the dirt and flung it up in front of him, sending a violent scatter of dirt and small rocks through the wall of butterflies, popping the majority of Jeb’s butterfly defenses in a fraction of a second.

I hate fighting smart people, Jeb thought, scrambling backward.

Svek grabbed a nearby belt lying on the ground and snapped it straight, and for some reason, it stayed straight. With a couple flicks of his wrist the melas had used the belt to pop the last remaining butterflies between the two of them.

Shit! Jeb thought, bunching his foot under himself and shoving away, trying to put more void butterflies between the two of them. If the Melas got his hands on Jeb it was game over.

It wasn’t some Hollywood movie or kids cartoon. When someone with overwhelmingly superior strength gets their hands on you, they don’t toss you, they pull you in and snap your neck.

Jeb was halfway through his awkward frog-leap when Svek flickered forward, meaty hand seizing Jeb’s  leg –peg leg! Jeb shoved himself further away, the pegleg detaching in the pirate’s hands.

The cloud of butterflies were only four feet off the ground now, so the Melas crawled after him, fiery murder in his eyes.

It took less than a second for the pirate king to overtake Jeb, and Jeb felt the huge hands grab his real leg at the same moment Jeb felt his questing hands touch down on something cold and heavy. Jeb’s eyes flicked up and he spotted Smartass standing above his revolver, giving him a thumbs-up.

Jeb’s hand seized around the grip just as Svek gave a bellow, hauling Jeb’s leg nearly out of his socket.

Jeb slid back toward the pirate violently, bringing his gun to bear as the pirate’s hands went for his neck.

For a crystalline instant, Jeb and the pirate stared each other down.

Then Jeb pulled the trigger.

…

Gun no go boom?

Jeb’s eyes widened as he spotted the pirate’s finger lodged between the hammer and the frame, a victorious smile on the man’s face.

Jeb felt the man’s scratchy fingers wrap around his neck, and he knew he could break Jeb’s neck one-handed. One second left.

In a last, desperate bid, Jeb reached out with his meager Myst, smacking the bullet’s primer inside the barrel with everything he had.

BOOM!

The fingers around Jeb’s neck went slack as a pancaked piece of lead dropped off Svek’s forehead onto Jeb’s neck, scorching his skin as it rolled off.

Svek gave him a confused, punch-drunk look, a bit of blood pooling in his eyes where the blood vessels had burst.

Then black butterflies ate his face.

Jeb rolled out of the way as the corpse toppled over, squirting blood out of a stump-neck. The move caused the knife in his guts to tug against the ground for a moment, and Jeb would’ve passed out right there, but for the gobs of rocket fuel coursing through his system.

He carefully hauled himself to his feet and scanned the eerily silent camp. Only the occasional pop of burning wood from the fire broke the silence as the remaining butterflies settled onto every surface, awaiting instructions.

“Is that all of them?” Jeb asked, glancing at Smartass.

“I think so. I’ll do a look-see,” she said, buzzing off to survey the camp.

Need first aid, Jeb thought, stumbling to a nearby corpse riddled with holes. He tugged at the man’s thick leather belt. Something he could use to help with the bleeding. Normally the rule of thumb is to not pull out whatever sharp object was inside you until the professionals could do it themselves, but that logic was predicated on a world where ambulances were a phone call away, and doctors still existed.

Jeb gathered ingredients for a good fifteen minutes in the silent camp before he stumbled his way over to the yurt with the girl in it. Jeb brushed the door aside, shedding light on the situation.

It made him wish he could’ve taken his time.

The Grenore girl was chained to a thick iron post drilled into the ground, her body covered with dirty hides. Where the skin was exposed, Jeb spotted bruises.

Goddamnit.

“Is it over?” A tentative voice asked as Jeb took a step into the yurt.

“I think so. Just waiting on word from my partner.” Jeb gave a self - deprecating chuckle as he approached the girl’s chains.

“Seraine Grenore, right? My name’s Jebediah Trapper, and I’m here to get you out of here. Honestly, I thought I would be a lot more heroic when I rescued you,” he said, “but now it turns out I need your help.”

Jeb grabbed the big lock keeping the girl from leaving and peered at it, scowling. Chances were the matching key was on Svek’s body. Jeb didn’t have the patience to go looking for it with a knife in his guts, so he opened it the old fashioned way.

He grabbed the tumblers with Myst and flipped them, springing the lock open in his hand like a magic trick.

“Did you kill them?”

Jeb searched her eyes for a moment. “Fuck yeah, I killed ‘em.”

“Good.” She buried herself deeper under the hides.

“I know you’ve had a pretty fucking rough couple days,” Jeb said, unhooking the lock from her restraints and freeing her. “And I would understand if you need to sit there and process, but I would really appreciate some help with removing this,” Jeb said, pointing to the handle sticking out of his stomach.

The keegan girl looked up at his face, then down at the knife handle before nodding.

“Okay.”

“Okay,” Jeb said, helping her to her feet and turning around while she got dressed. Their species all looked like holocaust survivors, and Jeb was fairly sure none of the people who’d assaulted her even thought she was pretty. They just wanted to hurt someone.

Once she was dressed, Jeb led her out into the open, where he sat down against the torture device. Next to him was a jug of nearly pure alcohol, a needle and thread, the cleanest cloth he could find, and a belt to cinch it all together.

“So here’s the plan,” Jeb said before walking her through the basics of what he expected to happen when the knife was removed, and how to handle it, just in case he passed out. The process took a couple minutes, but it paid off in spades.

“Ready?” Jeb asked. Seraine nodded, holding alcohol and bandages.

Jeb slowly removed the knife, biting a leather strap through the pain and trying desperately not to cut anything new on the way out. Minutes felt like hours, and when the blade left Jeb’s stomach, he got the unenviable sensation of a gush of warm blood streaming down his stomach and basting his crotch in his own juices.

Then she hit him with the alcohol.

Jeb’s eyes rolled back in his skull, and everything went black.