Chapter 10: Lost in Translation (Patreon)

“You two need to run.” Vresh said, a bead of sweat forming on her brow.

“Fuck that. This guy just admitted to killing everyone here,” Steven said.

“He did?” Jeb asked, totally lost.

“Run!” Vresh shouted. Her body flickered forward, followed by a blast of wind. She raised her left hand and it flickered, a sword appearing in it. Blood geysered out of the throat of the keegan on the left, and he collapsed to the ground, choking and clutching his neck, his sheath empty.

The black-robed keegan waved dismissively, and Jeb thought he saw a thin beam of dark blue Myst strike the melas woman in the center of her forehead before she could react. Vresh’s eyes rolled into her skull and she slumped over, barely avoiding falling on the sword in her hand as she slid to a halt directly in front of the robed keegan.

The keegan in black shook his head and clicked his tongue before a spark of minty-white Myst jolted the rifle-bearing alien back to health. The keegan gasped a grateful breath of air, taking his hands away from his neck in disbelief.

“Fuck this!” the heavy gunner standing next to Jeb shouted, pulling the trigger.

Nothing happened.  Another pencil-lead thin beam of dark blue struck the corporal in the forehead, and he toppled over his favorite weapon, unconscious or possibly dead.

Well, this day has gone south quickly. Jeb thought, glancing at his two hopefully unconscious companions. Jeb didn’t even know how it’d been done. It reminded Jeb of those professionals in pre-apocalypse youtube videos who did their work so quickly and smoothly it eluded the eye and looked like a magic trick. The keegan had just made magic look like a magic trick. That was saying something.

“Ish shei jish suo gi?” the gibberish-speaking keegan asked, pointing at Jeb.

“That’s the one I told you about,” the rifle-bearing alien said as he sat up. “The stain.”

Jeb had no idea what he had done specifically that had warranted that nickname, but it seemed like he was starting off on a bad foot.

“Whoah, I was just doing a job here. I’d rather not get murdered,” Jeb said, hands raised, heart pounding in his ears. I need a Myst insulator to hide behind or something, this guy is taking people out with an outrageous amount of skill…but all the gold is elsewhere. How the hell am I gonna get out of here in one piece?

Jeb caught a break when the gibberish-speaker got real excited after hearing Jeb talk.

“Vah, ji shei, Vah ji shei!?”

“He denies culpability and begs for his life.” The keegan on the left said, giving Jeb the stink-eye.

“Shi ji go zetch ok’zheit.”

“My employer wants to know why you don’t have the System.”

Jeb’s mind whirred. That’s why we can’t understand each other. The other guy must be missing the System too, otherwise we’d get a translation. That brought up the question of how this guy was missing his. It seemed like, short of literal divine intervention, you couldn’t really opt out of inclusion in The System. That implied this guy was some form of important.

Well, that and knocking out an Enforcer without breaking a sweat.

“I do have the System, but I’ve been blacklisted,” Jeb said slowly, pumping Myst Triggers into the ground through his feet, aimed at rescuing Vresh and Stevens. He was worried the Faradan would block it at first, but the stone was a fairly good conductor of String-state Myst.

The triggers were designed to grab the two unmoving bodies and fling them a quarter mile to the south. Both of them had high enough Body that a little high-speed ragdoll collision with concrete wouldn’t bother them too much.

Jeb didn’t have time to design something fancy.

“He’s been blacklisted,” The gun-toting keegan translated.

“Ha ha ha ha! Ban’vi! Ban’vi!” the towering keegan clapped his hands together in delight. His gaze fixed on the book in Jeb’s hand, and the wizard unleashed a flurry of questions.

“My employer would like to know if you’ve had any formal schooling. The book you’re carrying is rather rare.”

Keep him talking, Jeb thought, spreading his triggers through the ground, some of them to shield him the moment a razor thin beam of Myst was shot his direction, Several others to attack – read, buy time –, and a final one to fling jeb backwards at max speed.

If Vresh got taken out that quick, then Jeb didn’t really see himself heroically winning against impossible odds. He saw himself getting cut in half by a casual Myst laser.

Back to the conversation.

“Formal schooling, yes, but no Myst in the curriculum, which I assume is what you’re talking about.” Jeb raised the book in his hand. “I pulled this out of a guy’s head.”

The rifle-bearing Keegan blinked. “He says no, and he stole the book.”

Asshole! Translate better!

The alien in the black flowing robe…I’ll just call him The Employer. He looked down at the ground curiously and cocked a brow, asking Jeb a question.

“My employer presumes your lack of schooling explains why you’ve failed to use Korzuth’s Tempering to render your Myst packets in the ground environment neutral or Zesh’nei’s Translation to deviate from applied kinetic Myst?”

Jeb’s jaw hung open.

The dude had been watching him set up his escape with the casual interest of a parent watching a toddler fingerpaint.

“Red riding hood.” Jeb said.

Dozens of strands of telekinetic Myst burst out of the ground, snagging Stevens and Vresh and flinging them into the distance, while others formed into spears of hardened air, aiming at the black-robed one.

Meanwhile, several dozen strands of Myst formed a complicated lever, aiming to catapult Jeb away at speeds his body might not even be able to withstand.

Then everything went to shit.

Some kind of force seized control of Jeb’s triggers like a pro wrestler, suplexing them into the ground. A spray of cracked faradan rose up as Jeb’s ejection seat lever smacked into the ground, all of Jeb’s spears sank into the ground mere inches away from the alien’s feet, weighed down by some enormous weight.

“My employer is somewhat disappointed. He asks if that’s all you can do, if you would prefer to have windows in your cell, and if you have any food allergies he should be aware of while experimenting on you.”

Jeb’s skin turned icy cold. Nope. Nobody’s experimenting on this boy.

“Knife love daddy, gun love daddy, Saw love daddy, Jeep pick me up.”

“Umm…He said some gibberish. A bunch of stuff about loving daddy?”

The jeep around the corner roared to life, shaking off a thin layer of faradan, and distracting them for an instant while Jeb grabbed himself with Myst and ran like a bitch.

Well, he tried.

The magical pro wrestler grabbed his Myst strings and yanked him violently back down to Earth. He hadn’t felt it directly earlier since the triggers weren’t connected to him, but now it felt like someone was grabbing a phantom limb and twisting it behind his back while giving him a noogie.

It was unpleasant, painful and humiliating.

Jeb tumbled to a halt, sliding face-first on the smooth stone. He flipped himself over with a grunt and held out his open right hand while angling his wooden foot toward the alien casually walking toward him.

“Say hello to my little friend.” Jeb said.

“He says say hello to-“

A rapid-fire burst of Annihilation Myst shot through the air between them, and The Employer’s eyes widened a bit before he shoved his rifle-bearing companion out of the way and ducked.

It wasn’t exactly street legal, but Jeb hadn’t found anything that performed better than Annihilation Myst. Plus he was a Citizen now. He’d just get a slap on the wrist.

Jeb tried to sink a shot into The Employer but the keegan seemed to gracefully slip between the shots in a way that defied logic. Some of the shots only had a couple inches between them. Keegan were thin, but they weren’t that thin.

Jeb’s ‘little friend’ trigger ran out just as he felt the metal handle of the murder-buckler land in his hand. He kicked himself to a stand as The Employer straightened his jacket, aiming the green arrow at him.

“Green go fast.” Jeb muttered. The blade tugged out of his grip and began spinning violently, tearing through the air toward the keegan’s face.

The Employer held out a hand, and Jeb was mortified to watch glowing orange Myst, his color of Myst, reach out and snag the spinning sawblade out of the air before plucking the remaining triggers out of it like a child plucking the wings off a fly.

Under the absolute terror, a small part of Jeb was intrigued at the proof that one person could use more than one kind of Myst.

But mostly terror.

“My employer says entirely physical attacks are a sign of limited-“

Jeb’s eyes flicked to where his jeep was heading toward them, it’s angle about to point straight toward the two keegan.

Just a fraction of a second more…

“The Heisenberg maneuver, Nitro.”

A volley of fifty heavy-duty spears of telekinetic force launched out of the front of the truck, straight towards The Employer. Then the Nitro trigger overwrote the ‘pick me up’ trigger and put the pedal to the metal, in addition to shoving the jeep forward, reaching a level of acceleration it should have never been able to on its own.

The spears evaporated on the surface of a faint bubble that surrounded The Employer like a drop of water on a hot oven, barely hinting at the shape of his defences.

The Employer cast a curious glance behind him before the charging Jeep clipped his robe, catching the rifle-bearing keegan across his midsection and putting him through a wall.

Missed. Damnit.

“Alpha strike!” Jeb shouted, throwing his palm forward. He’d recharged it during their stay underground.

The wild assault of telekinetic Myst sizzled and evaporated against an invisible bubble, just as before.

“Knife go boom!” Jeb shouted, scrambling backward as the Employer glanced away from the jeep halfway through the wall. Jeb’s knife exploded into shrapnel right beside the keegan, but the explosion seemed to wash harmlessly around him.

Son of a bitch! Nothing’ll put a dent in this guy! There’s gotta be fucking something…Jeb had a pretty freakin’ big bag of tricks, but it was starting to run dry.

Myst-based attacks did nothing. Physical attacks did nothing…

Jeb felt the .44 revolver settle itself into his palm.

Without thinking, Jeb whipped the gun up and fired off three rounds. Two bullets warped around the keegan, and the last one wound up sandwiched between his fingers.

“Ist zhei dan kozheist?” He asked, eyeing the squished teardrop of lead. The keegan gave an irritated glance at where his translator had been driven through a wall before returning his gaze to Jeb. “Zi san lejaisho, ges annein zho jisht.”

Stupid! Jeb was kicking his own ass for wasting three bullets as he crawled backward, his heart beating violently in his chest. He might have been numb to threats of death, but being locked in a room and experimented on bypassed the scar tissue on his brain and got him good. He was panting from exertion and he hadn’t moved more than a couple steps, like the fear was clinging to him and tiring him out.

Not like the bullets could’ve done anything, anyway, Jeb thought sourly. I could kill myself with one. That’d show him. Experiment on me over my cold dead body, dickwad.

Jeb glanced down at the gun in his hand, wondering if this was really the end of his story.

Just past the handle of the revolver, Jeb spotted the very edge of the god-given Appraiser wrapped around his finger, and a crazy thought occurred to him.

Myst attacks don’t work. Physical attacks don’t work.

Jeb’s trembling fingers seized the Appraiser, dragging it off.

***A little backstory***

Gunpowder was invented in 9th century China, but it wasn’t until the twelfth century that some mad geniuses raised the nitrate content on the mixture, put it inside a metal tube and created a ‘bullet’ that completely occluded the barrel, creating the modern definition of a ‘gun’ which allowed the gunpowder to exert as much force as possible.

And the rest, as they say, is history. Guns and bullets caught on slowly at first. They were cumbersome, slow to reload, hard to fire. oftentimes a poor foot soldier would only get a single use off before his opponent would run him through with a spear.

But despite how difficult to use they were, they never quite fell out of favor, for one defining reason: the gun didn’t care how big, or skillful, or how brave the other guy was. They simply killed.

They shattered morale, they broke charges, they made horses lose their nerve, they made farmers as strong as the greatest warriors of their day, mortally wounding them with a single application of a spark.

And over time they only got better at what they did…

They really started catching on in the fifteenth and sixteenth century when the matchlock was introduced alongside the musket, a standardized form that was relatively simple to learn and use, and allowed the soldier to concentrate his attention on aiming rather than lighting the gunpowder and trying not to blow his fingers off.

This standardized form and ease of use allowed large groups of soldiers to volley fire and create a predictable stream of death-dealing lead marbles.

Once cartridges were invented in the mid-nineteenth century, all bets were off. Repeaters were introduced that allowed a single soldier to fire off a dozen rounds in a matter of seconds, then machine guns were invented that allowed a two-man team to obliterate large formations.

That was the final nail in the coffin of the ‘let’s stand in a big line and shoot at each other’ era.

In came the age of trench warfare, followed by blitzkrieg a few decades later. Air, sea, land, every possible place people could murder each other –  except space – guns in all their forms followed along, ready to mutilate the other guy with a twitch of a finger, regardless of how strong, fast, intelligent, or nice to puppies he was.

And they kept getting better.

When Xen caught the .44 bullet between his fingers, he was curious and asked Jeb if it was just a drop of lead. The concept of flinging lead at the other guy to kill them was foreign and quaint to him, as lead is too soft a material to penetrate a ‘modern’ warrior. The realities of life in a magic world simply do not align well with the physics of guns.

Something the Sindio hadn’t really considered though, was how much baggage guns have. The staggering amount of time and effort humans have spent perfecting these weapons, and how many millions of lives have been claimed by them. That kind of baggage develops something of a life of its own.

A mythos, if you will. The Fate dimension is less about physics, and more about mythos.

Yes, technically it’s a drop of lead, but it’s a drop of lead with nine hundred years of killing intent packed into it.

You put something like that in the fifth dimension, and you’re asking for trouble.

***Jeb***

This is gonna hurt, Jeb thought, wincing as he held the divine ring with swirling Myst in the center up to the barrel of the gun. He had considered using Myst to hold the ring there and save his fingers, but he didn’t want to give The Employer something he could take control over.

You know, assuming he can’t just puppet me whenever he wants, Jeb thought.

Jeb took a deep breath, shoved a bunch of Myst through the ring, and pulled the trigger.

There was a blast of light a hundred times greater than muzzle flash, and Jeb’s fingers immediately informed him exactly how bad of an idea he’d just committed to. The ring tumbled to the ground, and Jeb clenched a fist around the screaming burns on his thumb and forefinger.

Jeb snatched the ring off the ground and looked up at the approaching keegan. Ideally he’d been blown to bits, but Jeb would take anything at this point.

The Employer’s brows were furrowed. He glanced around, seemingly wondering where Jeb’s bullet had gone. He patted himself down idly. Nothing.

The keegan shrugged and took another step toward Jeb before his leg buckled under the strain, nearly dropping him to the ground.

His eyes widened, staring at the leg that had seemingly betrayed him. The keegan stood up straight and held out his hands.

“Kol, zhep kees, gek zak GAN!” he shouted as a flood of maroon Myst emerged from his hands and formed a shimmering wall in the air that looked like a mirage.

The rifle-bearing keegan crawled out of the building over the roof of Jeb’s jeep and limped toward the shimmering wall.

Once both of them were standing behind the mirage, the wall swept over them, and they simply…vanished.

That was it? Jeb thought, brow raised, adrenaline still coursing through his veins. He tasted blood, a little.

Screw it, don’t look a gift horse in the mouth. Time to relocate. If the guy could teleport, then he’d better get far away from the last place the keegan had seen him. Except for one minor detail…

Jeb clambered to his feet and went looking for the nukes. He still had business to take care of before he could flee.

This is turning out to be a more complicated than I expected, Jeb thought as he glanced back at the faradan monolith sunk into the center of the Air Force Base. And I expected it to be pretty complicated.

“Wand love daddy?”

***Kol, level 58 Courier***

I think my entire body is a single bruise, Kol thought, staggering through the font door of Xen’s manor. Still, it was better than having his throat sliced open by his own sword. Kol still didn’t quite know how the melas woman had gotten it off of him.

The sindio strode ahead of him with purpose, like an old woman during a Kezdak sale. He was rattling off instructions to his minions as he strode past them, aiming for the second floor.

“Lien, someone’s going to probably discover my secret hideout today, so be prepared to move, and warm up the memory eraser. And just…be on standby for general mayhem I suppose.”

“As you wish,” the sindio’s butler said with a bow.

Xen ducked his head into the side rooms where hundreds of very small, rotund men and women with shiny skin were experimenting with human chemistry.

“Ladies and gentlemen, we are on emergency lockdown until further noti-

A pressure cooker exploded beside Xen’s head, covering it with shrapnel and smoking acid.

Some of it got on a few of his bibble. The little people had a terrific resistance to chemicals, but they weren’t immune. They shrugged their lab coats off and wiped their skin down with towels, wincing in discomfort.

“Actually, you guys are fired. Get the fuck out of my house.” Xen said, head smoking. He slammed the door and continued down the hall, firing everyone in each of his Research and Development rooms.

“Umm…why-“

“Why am I firing everyone?”

“Yes, that.”

“I realized my employees count towards my Impact. I am currently bleeding Impact. Think of it as staunching a wound. If they’re fired, they can’t get killed by the Fate dimension trying to balance itself with reality, because technically, they no longer work for me. I’ll hire them back once I’m fixed.”

That was surprisingly kind of him, although it begged the question…

“Why aren’t you firing me?”

The sindio glanced back at him, half of his face melting, little pieces of metal falling out of the drooping skin to reveal the skull beneath.

“Because I’m going to need a second pair of hands, and you’re the toughest minion I have on hand, so you probably won’t die. I’ll give you hazard pay.

How reassuring, Kol thought, keeping a straight face.

BOOM!

Behind them, the door exploded off its hinges, revealing…a rather small human with arms that were almost keegan-thin. It’s torso had an unpleasant hourglass shape to it, though. Probably a female.

“This is the Imperial Enforcer Casey Thompson. Upon investigating reports of disappearances, I discovered links to this building. You’re officially under investigation on suspicion of reaping or other malfeasance. I advise everyone to drop whatever you’re doing and come out with your hands on your head.”

“How did she – Ugh.” Xen drew a hand down his melting face. “Lien, could you take care of this and then relocate the lair?”

“Sir,” The melas butler nodded as Xen turned away, ignoring the enforcer at the other end of the hall.

“Hey! Hey, don’t leave!” She shouted as Xen began descending the stairs three at a time.

The last Kol saw of her, Lien was apologetically standing in her way.

Kol heard a fair amount of shouts and banging from upstairs, but it never seemed to come any closer. There was another, deeper voice shouting, a blast of fire that nearly followed them down the stairs, and several explosions, but the very short human didn’t appear at the top of the stairs.

Apparently Lien was strong enough to stop an Enforcer. Kol knew for a fact that he wasn’t strong enough to stop and Enforcer. The fat melas woman being a case in point.

“I thought you said I was the strongest you had on hand.”

“’On hand’ being the key phrase,” Xen said, heading for the Scary Door without a care in the world and throwing it open, dispelling the blanket of fear that made it so difficult to approach. “Lien’s busy.”

The entire building rocked.

Can’t argue with that.

Xen strode to the back of his human-tech workshop and threw open another door, marching through without a care. Kol’s skin felt the pressure change as they walked through the portal connecting Xen’s dungeon to his manor.

Suddenly they were walking under vaulted ceilings made of raw stone, surrounded by magical devices of every shape and size. Kol wasn’t an expert, but he did recognize a few from the old cautionary tales about Sindio.

There’s the one he used to break the line of Jestan. Kol could tell by its egg-shape with clear walls that allowed you to watch a bead of colored water split infinitely. It marked a lineage and killed everyone related to them.

There’s the one that eroded the ground below the town of Kisbei and sank a third of the kingdom around it into the earth.

That one was shaped like a sword with an odd cross at the tip and had a mushroom for a pommel.

The hundreds, or even thousands of other devices on display…Kol had no idea.

“It wasn’t actually supposed to kill the entire line,” Xen said, following his gaze as he snatched a strange plump ring of matte silver off a display. “I was experimenting with eugenics. I thought if I could maybe…select the fittest ruler out of each generation, eventually you would have an amazing king.”

He waved his hand dismissively

“Of course, real life got in the way of that pretty quick. The machine selected young Tyzanti Vestos as the most ideal of the lot…but he was only twelve years old, so his minister killed him, took the title, and I got the blame. If I ever come back to the idea of breeding a line of kings, I’ll add a protection clause for the selected ‘stud king’.”

The ring in Xen’s hand was about the size of a man’s head, but it was very fat, only allowing barely enough space for a single hand to fit through. It had a flat spot of the bottom that seemed to have two indents for something.

Xen hooked a left turn and strode up to a large contraption against the side wall. It was composed of several enormous glass cylinders with head-sized dungeon cores at the bottom of them, and a thick metal band around the center.

The sindio pulled down a metal arm from the wall and fixed a metal plate to it that married with the fat ring of silver, hooking into the two depressions on the flat edge.

Humming, the ancient evil followed two thick tubes along the mechanical arm back to where they attached to the dungeon cores, fiddling with the seals to make sure they were solid.

Satisfied, the wizard flipped an oversized switch upward that broke the seal above the dungeon cores, allowing Myst to pour into their containers.

In a blink of an eye, an enormous amount of Myst was converted and channeled straight into the fat silver ring, and even Kol, Myst-dead as he was, could faintly see the swirling grey in the center of the ring.

“Alright Kol,” Xen said, moving the mechanical arm in front of his chest. “I’m gonna need you to dig around in my chest in the Fate dimension until you find a bullet.”

“What?”

“A little drop of lead, about yay big?” Xen said, holding apart his thumb and forefinger.

In the distance, Kol heard something clatter, and a strange buzzing. He glanced back over the endless field of magical doodads, but couldn’t spot whatever was moving around.

“Focus, Kol, bullet first, then we deal with whatever freed itself just now.

There was more clattering, and Kol this time, Kol saw a few more stands fall over, releasing gods-knew-what into the sindio’s dungeon. There were things that could topple empires just sitting around in here!

“Kol, if we stop to chase these minor problems, they will continue happening until I die. If I die, It will most likely be after you, not before. So if you want to live, I’m going to need you to jam your fist inside me.”

The sindio tapped the ring pressed up against his chest.

Kol let out a growl and shoved his hand through the odd ring, feeling around for the wound.

Xen leaned up against the ring, seemingly relaxed as Kol dug around his insides on multiple dimensions.

“You know, this whole ordeal gives me an idea for what I could do with those bombs you brought back.”