Chapter 5: Saw Love Daddy (Patreon)

Humans were streaming like ants toward the east side of the air force base, and the ants…they were forming ranks.

Small caliber bullets pancaked ineffectually off the heavily armored forelimbs as the creatures marched forward in lockstep, commanding the space in the streets. Every once in a while a bullet would penetrate the creature’s forelimbs. Whether that was due to a Skill, or a failing of the creature’s armor, it didn’t make a difference. A small spot of blue blood like a horseshoe crab’s emerged from where the bullet penetrated, but not much more happened.

They kept marching forward.

Any humans too dumb to move out of the way got wrecked, as there was a small diamond-shaped gap in the foreleg armor. From that tiny hole in their defense, the creatures shot out long, skinny tongues with an absurd amount of force behind them. At the end of these tongues was a single hard tooth, sharp and deadly, with barbs on it facing backward.

Jeb witnessed one unlucky bastard get shafted. The man threw his hand up reflexively to ward off the strike, the spearlike projectile lodging in his hand before he was reeled in like a hooked trout.

The two shield-like forelimbs opened for just an instant, revealing a meat-grinder of a face as the hapless soldier was drawn through the gap. A moment later, the forelimbs snapped shut, and the guy was gone.

Well, except for a bit of his ankle there.

The kid’s bloody Nikes flopped on the ground outside the shield, foot still in the shoe.

It wasn’t a completely one-sided engagement, though. Here and there, Jeb saw the humans pushing the creatures back. Cecil made black wires coated with whatever material they were born from, tangling the creatures and disrupting their advance, even dismembering a few of them.

To the north, Jeb could just barely make out an enterprising young man with a Browning machine gun on top of a building. The guy swept heavy machine gun fire across the frontline, the plume of fire jetting out the front visible even from Jeb’s distance.

It cut down the front line in a swath of destruction, easing the pressure of their advance, until the line buckled.

The front line scattered, and dozens of smaller, faster creatures emerged from beneath the sheltering umbrella of the shield creature’s armor, dropping off their bellies and spreading everywhere like a sack full of spider eggs. There were simply not enough bullets in existence to take care of all those hopping bastards.

The kid was quick on the uptake and immediately pulled the pin on a grenade, annihilating a large portion of the tiny creatures before heaving the heavy machine gun over his shoulder and abandoning his position, escaping the approaching swarm. The ceasefire was exactly what the shield creatures needed to reorganize, reform and begin their march again. Behind the front line, some shieldbearers stopped and seemingly ate their kin, their brown carapace taking on a bluer tone as they ate.

Please tell me the survivors aren’t getting stronger.

The kid set up on a new building and started up again.

The blue ones took longer to take down, and the quick death of their lesser kind naturally allowed them to link up their shields, pushing even further than before.

WHOOSH!

The sound of a jet from Jeb’s right caused him to whip his head around toward the noise. The last thing he wanted was for Legolas to reveal his hand early against a plane they weren’t using for mass destruction.

Only…it wasn’t a plane.

It was the general.

The iron-haired woman was flying, whirling jets of silvery Myst around her body allowed her to soar at breakneck speeds, making the distinctive noise of a jet-engine, albeit a small one. She swooped over top the source of the problem, the hundred-foot brown slime mold sinking into the earth, and began picking off freshly born insects with pulses of some kind of sonic Myst, crippling the creature’s advance.

I’ve been watching too long, Jeb thought. It was time to shit or get off the pot.

He wouldn’t be able to explain away the hole in his window, so the best bet now was to help, and help well. There was a damn good chance the old bat would try to have him killed anyway, unless he was really impressive.

Hi-ho silver, away!

Jeb flew himself low over the buildings, dressed in nothing but his boxers and a silk robe, singing his own version of flight of the Valkyrie.

“Saw love daddy, saw love daddy, saw love DAAADDY!” Jeb shouted as he zigzagged over the buildings heading toward the conflict zone.

Jeb heard a banging sound through the chaos of the firefight off to his left, and spotted a squat, nondescript little building a moment before the front door peeled apart, allowing the murder-buckler to hurtle towards him, cutting through the air and anything else that got between it and him.

Jeb held his hand out and tried not to flinch as the sawblade ripped through the air toward him. Flinching was a good way to make the if-then statements get messed up and lose some fingers. At the last second, the saw flipped around and placed its handle into his palm.

So that’s where my shit is, Jeb thought, flying to the plain white building. He landed directly in front of the shredded metal panel and reached his Myst into the latch, opening it easily and tugging the door open.

Jeb took one confident stride into the contraband room before there was an ear-pummeling bang, and a handful of his FMO shields popped. The nine millimeter bullet was flung back with somewhat less force, but it still grazed the guard’s hand and caused him to drop his gun, grabbing his bleeding knuckles with a sharp intake of breath.

“You’re lucky it didn’t hit you in the eye,” Jeb said with a nod before turning his attention to the metal cage and the many, many bins of gear they’d collected. Everything from automatic weapons to magic wands, swords, spears, and imperial marks.

Jeb hoped they hadn’t gotten those by raiding caravans, but he wasn’t holding his breath.

Jeb reached his strand of Myst into the lock on the door and popped it open as easily as the front door.

“Staff love daddy!” Jeb called.

There was a clatter from further back in the storage area as the death-deer staff leaped off some hidden shelf and flew through the air. The security guard tracked the floating staff with wide eyes as it flung itself into Jeb’s grip.

He’d made the prototype a couple months ago with Eddie, and he’d never gotten an opportunity to test Buck to his fullest. This seemed like a good opportunity

The satellite dish shaped head of the staff was coated with mercury-silver amalgum and it did a great job of concentrating a wide spread of Myst onto a single point, making each and every death-deer that emerged more powerful compared to its size than a normal one would be.

“You’ve got about three minutes before the front line of the bugs reaches this spot,” Jeb said, eyeing the guard who was stooping for his nine-millimeter handgun. “And that gun probably isn’t gonna do you much good. If I were you, I’d find somewhere else to be.”

Jeb stepped back out into the street, picking himself off the ground and humming along above the hot asphalt. Jeb turned the corner and found himself staring down the street at the bug’s front line, bullets splattering across their heavy armor.

There was a line of about a dozen of them with interlocked forelimbs, and hundreds more behind that, organized and nigh unstoppable. The number of blueish carapaces was gradually gaining as more and more of them started appearing.

Some blue ones even emerged from the brown muck gradually spreading behind them.

Let’s make some breathing room. Jeb held the staff in front of himself like a sawed-off and gave the command phrase.

“Buck-pocalypse.”

With that command, the tightly wound Myst concealed inside the staff unspooled, feeding itself through the Myst lens sandwich at the base of the dish.

Twelve point stags as tall as Jeb at the shoulder blinked into existence at a terrifying rate, filling up the street with the Annihilation-aspected animals. Jeb felt the control lens tether each and every one of the Bucks to his will, giving him a squad of fifty oversized death deer in a matter of seconds.

“Buck, punch a hole through the line,” Jeb said, pointing straight ahead, to the advancing line of solid chiton. Jeb needed to buy the humans and himself some more time to figure out what the hell was going on.

The Bucks lowered their antlers and obliged. The moment they got close, the strange insects struck, lashing out with their ranged attacks, trying to skewer the charging deer.

Unfortunately for the insects, the dark Annihilation Myst had settled into their antlers, and it simply wiped from existence anything that touched them, including spike-tipped tongues.

The deers crashed into the line of shields, their antlers cutting through the creature’s armor like a hot knife through butter. The death deer carved their way through the front line and the one behind, forcing the insects to collapse backward to maintain their line, and leaving chunks of twitching meat behind them.

Good job, Buck.

Jeb grabbed himself with a string of Myst and launched back into the air, studying the problem.

The problem is there’s too damn many of them, Jeb thought, squinting his eyes. Wait a sec. Now that he was closer, Jeb’s eyes could make out a pale grey whirlwind directly above the center of the brown stain covering the land.

It sure as hell wasn’t cloud, and it wasn’t dust, either. It looked like a miniature tornado, or…a sink drain. It was Myst, getting sucked into the center of that goop at an outrageous rate!

The general seemed to have noticed it too, because she flew over to a building, ducked her head in and emerged with what appeared to be an RPG.

That might work.

The steel-haired woman flew back up into the air, and spotted Jeb halfway to the swirling center that continued to bury itself deeper and deeper into the earth. It was about thirty feet below the groundline already and continuing to sink.

She nudged the RPG in Jeb’s direction, and he raised his hands, shaking his head, giving her the ‘It wasn’t me’ body language.

She glanced back to the sinkhole belching Army Ants in her Air Force Base and decided to use the RPG on that instead of him. Thank God, cuz I don’t know if I have enough FMO shields to stop one of those. The woman fired the weapon straight into the center of the Myst whirlwind.

BOOM!

A few pieces of shrapnel plinked off Jeb’s shields, and a massive spray of brown goop was thrown into the air, obscuring his view. A moment later, the rain of brown mud finally came to a halt, and Jeb blinked.

The whirlwind was bigger, and there were suddenly a few more of them scattered around here and there. The sinkhole gave an odd, biological shudder, bobbing like an Adam’s apple before it began sinking faster than before, the number of insects spawning redoubling.

Jeb could hear the woman cursing above the whine of her Myst churning the air to keep her afloat, but he was busy trying to figure out a way to deal with it.

I gotta figure out what I’m looking at. Out of the corner of his eye, Jeb spotted a tractor parked next to a bunch of airfield maintenance equipment. It was more likely to be used to remove large roadkill than snow, but it paid to be prepared.

Especially in this case, Jeb thought, directing one of his Bucks to meet him at the plow. With a few contemptuous flicks of the stag’s antlers, the steel blade was freed from the tractor’s front, just as Jeb landed on it.

Jeb grabbed onto the hunk of metal for dear life, and sunk all his Myst into it. The plow was just under Jeb’s maximum lift, but he managed to move the thing, with himself riding on top of it. He launched himself into the air and angled for the center of the Myst Whirlwind.

“What are you doing!?” the old woman screamed as he flew past, riding the plow like that old black and white movie with the guy riding a bomb.

“Pro bono work!” Jeb shouted on the way by. A long insect tongue hissed past his shoulder as he slammed the plow blade into the ground and started dragging it through. The task was made easier by the sheer goopiness of the brown mud.

One thing was for sure, it did not smell like mud up close. It was humid and very…organic smelling.

The plow hit something in the goop at the center of the vortex, and that turned out to be…

A Core? Jeb blinked as he spotted a dungeon core, similar to the ones they’d tasked the citizens of Solmnath with collecting. It was sure as hell bigger than a quarter, though, and it was sucking in Myst like nobody’s business. Even where Jeb’s Myst infused the plow, his control wavered as it was torn right out. Jeb moved his Myst to the back of the blade.

It didn’t look damaged or missing any chunks at all, so why did shooting it with an RPG make more? Jeb had to assume the smaller vortexes were new cores.

Ah, hell, I don’t know how these things are supposed to work anyway.

Actually that wasn’t true. Jeb did know that S.O.P. was to contain dungeon cores in Myst-proof containers so they couldn’t warp their surroundings. Jeb had attended the same lecture as everyone else, after all.

It’s too bad we don’t have any of those around here…Jeb had successfully scraped the core out of the brown gunk for a moment, but there was no way to stop it. The damn thing was already making the surface of his plow blade melt into brown gunk.

Actually…Jeb flicked the plow blade up and dropped control of it, jumping into the air before grabbing himself with Myst. The Core landed on the metal with a soft clink as Jeb rose into the air, orienting on the casinos in the distance.

There’s gotta be a whole hell of a lot of gold in Vegas.

Gold was, as far as Jeb knew, an excellent insulator of Myst, and one of the softest metals around. If Jeb could get a disk of it, he could pinch it closed around the Core and cut off its intake, thereby slowing its transmutation of the surroundings. It was a more expensive, hamfisted solution than the core vials, but they didn’t exactly have a lot of options.

“Well, that didn’t work!” The general said, flying up beside him.

“How much gold do you have!?” Jeb shouted over the sound of her Myst engines.

“WHAT!?”

“GOLD!”

***Colt, level 27 Slinger***

“You sure no one else knows about this?” Colt asked, peering into the dark cavern. The hole was only wide enough for one of them to fit in at a time. Thankfully they were small enough they could wear their armor into the hole.

“No one alive, anyway,” Ari said with a shrug.

“Yay! I’ll check it out! I’m a starfish!” Nancy shouted, aiming to worm her way into the hole. Colt caught her shoulder and shook his head, placing his book in front of the entrance to prevent any of the other kids from doing the same.

No one alive? Colt thought, studying the fairy. Jeb had mentioned in passing that you gotta pay real close attention to how a fairy phrases their words. Ari seemed like an idiot that just got caught trying to steal something, but the way she spoke gave Colt the feeling she was playing him.

Well there’s one way to figure this out.

“I did my part! Now, for your end of the Deal!” She held her hands out and made ‘gimmie’ motions.

“There’s treasure in there?”

“All sort of magical gear the likes of which you’ve never seen before.”

“And why don’t you get it yourself?”

Ari huffed “Like I told you, the monster that guards the dungeon’s too strong for little old me. I think you guys could vanquish the beast handily though.”

“You know for a fact that there’s treasure in there?”

“Absolutely.”

“When was the last time you went in and actually saw the treasure?”

Ari held up a finger, her jaw slowly opening.

“Two months ago?” she said, her confidence faltering.

“So you’re sure it’s still there?”

“Yes.”

“Why?” Colt asked. “We’re not the strongest team on the mountain. Probably not the most perceptive either. What makes you think someone else hasn’t beaten the monster in there if we haven’t?”

“Are you gonna grill me all day or are you gonna go in the dungeon? It doesn’t matter to me either way because I showed you where the treasure is, so pay me!”

“I have a better idea,” Colt said, snatching up the fairy before she had a chance to respond.

With a little bit of squirming, Colt shoved the fairy into one of the glass containers for dungeon cores then covered the lid with duct tape from their backpacks and poked holes in the top.

“This isn’t part of the Deal!” She said, her body held straight as a board by the narrow glass walls she was trapped in.

“You’re right,” Colt said with a shrug. “That means there’s nothing stopping me.” Colt duct taped the vial to the end of a long stick, making his very own fairy-tipped ten foot pole for trapfinding.

“Now, I’ll make you a Deal,” the teen said, “You holler if you notice anything dangerous, and in return I’ll pull the stick back.”

“That’s extortion!” Ari screamed, her voice muffled by the duct tape lid.

“Hey!” Nancy shouted, pinching Colt in the side with an iron grip.

“Ow, what!?”

“Don’t be mean to fairies!”

“I’m trying to prove a point, Nancy. Watch.”

Colt slid the stick into the hole, with the trapped fairy leading the way. Ari went from alarmed to screaming bloody murder as soon as the darkness fell over her glass container.

“Pull me back! Pull me back! I’m not supposed to go in there! He’ll kill me! Please, I’ll serve your lineage for seven generations, just get me outta here!”

“Who’s ‘he’?” Colt asked, pulling the fairy back out of the hole. The little creature was shaking inside her tube, her arms wrapped defensively around her.

She was terrified.

“I can’t tell you.”

“That’s a lie. You can and you will.”

“I literally can’t tell you!” Ari shouted.

“Oh well, in you go!” Colt said, sliding the fairy back into the darkness until Nancy punched him in the side.

It felt like he’d been kicked in the ribs by a horse, and his body was flung to the side, slamming up against the mountainside as the little girl took his place. She slid the stick back out of the hole and started unwrapping the duct tape, plucking the fairy out of the vial and holding her gently, patting her back with her finger.

“There, there, it’s okay, the big, dumb boy isn’t gonna be mean to you any more.”

Colt held his breath as Ari began to sob, hugging Nancy’s thumb and bawling.

“It’s okay Ari, we’re not gonna hurt you. What were you so afraid of anyway?”

“N-nobody w-who goes i-in, comes out aliiiive!” Ari said, rubbing her tear-streaked face on Nancy’s palm. “I was so scared!”

Nancy glanced up at Colt with a raised brow. Nancy still had that core of sweetness that she’d had when he’d first met her, but it was buried a lot deeper now. It was reserved for people she knew.

“It’s okay, you don’t have to be scared,” She said, petting the sobbing fairy. We won’t let him know you went into the cave. How’s he gonna know?”

“Like, a million different ways!” Ari shouted, flailing her arms. “He’s a powerful sindio and he…” Ari’s jaw dropped, her crying stopped with a hiccup.

“You’re working me!” She screeched, pointing her finger at Nancy.

“You were working us,” Nancy said with a shrug.

“Leading us into a place no one comes back from alive?” Colt asked, shaking his head. “I think you’re on the lower end, karmically speaking.”

Ari just glared at him.

“Come on guys, let’s get the heck outta here.” Colt jabbed a finger at Ari. “You’re no longer welcome here.”

“Yes she is, She still needs to serve my family for seven generations and I want a fairy like Jeb.” Nancy said, clutching Ari tighter to her chest and scowling.

Ari paled.

Colt quickly weighed the options in his head. He could outright refuse Nancy, which would tick the nine-year old girl off, and put a murderous fairy back into circulation, or he could set up some ground rules.

“You can have her if you tell her not to communicate with anyone but me until further notice.”

That way the fairy couldn’t mislead anyone except Colt until they got home. It was a temporary fix, they could come up with a more comprehensive set of rules when they got home.

“Why you!?” Nancy scowled.

“So she can’t lie to anyone else until we get home.” Colt held up his hand. “I promise I’ll let her talk to you when we get back.”

“Wait!” Ari said, squirming in Nancy’s hands “I changed my mind!”

“Ari, I accept your offer of servitude for seven generations in exchange for removing you from that cave.” Nancy said.

“Crap,” Ari muttered, deflating in Nancy’s hands.

“Your first rule is you won’t communicate with anyone but Colt until I say otherwise.” Nancy patted Ari on the head while she spoke.

Ari’s eyes stared into the void like a wet cat.

“Alright, let’s get out of here before this Sindio or whatever shows up. And let’s ask Zlesk what a Sindio is.” The surrounding children nodded and started packing up their stuff.

“I can help with that,” a voice came from only a few tens of feet away, causing Colt to nearly jump out of his skin.

Colt bit back reflexive profanity and inspected the stranger. It was a keegan, about seven feet tall, wearing a thick black robe covered in gold embroidered symbols, so fine he couldn’t see the threads.

“No thanks, we were just about to leave.”

“Oh, alright, that’s fine, it’s just…” He shifted his feet awkwardly for a moment before outstretching his hand. “This is the human greeting, correct?”

Colt hesitated a moment, then clasped the keegan’s hand, nodding.

“Call me Vex, I’m a historian of sorts, and I overheard you mention a sindio. I thought, since you’re humans, you probably haven’t heard the stories.” The towering keegan wiggled in place, seemingly from unrestrained enthusiasm.

“I’d love to stay and chat, but apparently there’s one of these Sindio nearby.”

“Oh, um, Okay.” Vex said, “Can I walk with you then?”

“No you may not.” Colt said. “We’re in the middle of competing for cores in the Roil clean-up, and you’re looking for an easy target. That’s not us, so make like a tree and leave,” Colt said, making walking motions with his fingers.

“An idiom and a pun all in one.” The keegan said with a chuckle. “New species bring such excellent turns of phrase. Alright, I tell you what. I will simply walk along the next ridge beside you and shout the story of Xen the sindio at you from a distance. That should work, right?”

Colt sighed, dragging his hand down his face. He wanted to poke the guy with a spear until he left, but there was a 99% chance this guy was the sindio Ari was terrified of presenting an amiable facade. Colt didn’t believe in coincidences.

He glanced at the fairy, who was pale and shivering, her eyes locked on the keegan.

Yup. Might as well humor him until we hit the ridge Zlesk and Buddy are hiding on.

“You can tell us the story as we walk.”

“Ban’vi! So the etymology of the word sindio is from an old keegan phrase that means ‘without gods’ It was first adopted about three thousand years ago to describe men who defied the order of the first gods and flouted The System. The meaning of the word gradually shifted to mean those who have achieved immortality through magical means, since so many of those original sindio who operated outside the bounds of The System wound up seeking immortality.”

“Or maybe the ones who didn’t seek immortality died out.” Colt said.

“Quite astute. Anyway, the word came to represent the common perception of an immortal dread wizard, the most famous example being Xen. Now Xen started as a minor scribe in Old Mestikos in the Age of Legends –

“Of course, the people living then didn’t think of it as the Age of Legends. That’s just what we call the time prior to and during the establishment of the System. It didn’t just snap online like your human computers, it actually had to grow across Pharos in the Fate dimension for a good hundred years. During that time, some people had The System, and some didn’t, but it spread vigorously. Like herpes.”

Colt groaned internally, as the keegan got real excited about ancient history.