Chapter 12: Shifting Goalposts (Patreon)

“It’s my opinion that your best shot at getting Casey back is making her kidnapper a better offer. I’m pretty sure I saw this guy in action and I seriously doubt any combination of people I know could stop him without incurring serious injuries or death.” Jeb said, rubbing his chin.

We have come to a similar conclusion. The towel wrote on its piece of paper.

“Which kind of begs the question: Who is he, and what does he want? That’s a gaping hole in our understanding of the situation.”

We are currently working on it, but it is made more difficult by the fact that the button didn’t get a good look at the master of the house, only the man’s butler.

“Well, If we’re talking about the same guy, he was a bit short for a keegan, wearing black robes with gold embroidery, a popped collar, and he didn’t have the System.”

Jeb flipped to the next page of his notepad and whipped out a quick doodle. He wasn’t an artist, but superhuman Nerve made him learn fast.

“You saw that?” Zlesk asked, leaning over Jeb’s shoulder. The former sheriff-turned-orphanage-patron had seen the knot of adults gathered around the living towel and come to investigate.

“Yeah, I figure there’s a good chance a young woman was kidnapped by him.”

“He’s done that and worse.” Zlesk said, his voice grim as he lifted Jeb’s doodle closer to his eyes. “The man you saw was a sindio.”

“Oh, so you know him.”

“I know of him. There’s only a handful of sindio left in existence, and each of them leave a wake of destruction in their path. They’re ancient wizards who have conquered death. I meant to talk to you about it in private earlier, but you were gone. There’s one in town and he’s courting the children.”

“Courting them? Eww.”

“Making friends with them, you rube.”

“I can see how immortal friends would be a rare commodity.” Jeb said, nodding.

“I would suggest moving the orphanage or hiding the children if I thought it would do any good.” Zlesk said with a shrug.

“You tell me everything you know about sindio.” Jeb pointed to Zlesk, then motioned to the towel. “You have your people research which one this is, and if there’s something he might trade for Casey.”

Understood.

The towel hopped up and started doing a funky dance, which Jeb could only assume was a method of sign-language devised by Casey’s living objects, meant to allow long-distance communication between themselves.

Zlesk sat down on the bench across from him and began to regale him with stories of Sindio.

It all seemed to revolve around Mestikos and the fall of the old empire which coincided with the dawn of the System. Wizards were devalued by common access to Class Abilities, which led to societal upheaval, which was seized upon by the kitri, who choked off Mestikos until it withered like a grape on the vine.

In all of this turmoil, the sindio, the most powerful wizards of Mestikos rejected the System out of spite and wanton destruction –

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why did the most powerful men in the city focus on wanton destruction for the next thousand years? They didn’t do it before, did they?”

“Because they’re evil. They’re sindio. Without gods.” Zlesk said as if it were self-explanatory.

“Okay, so most of these men and women were formerly the ruling council of Mestikos?” Jeb asked.

“Most of them, yes.”

“So they were invested in law and order for a lifetime, until one day a switch flipped and they decided to devote all their time to spreading misery for no benefit to themselves?” Jeb asked.

“They stripped themselves of the System.” Zlesk said.

I don’t have the System, numbnuts. Jeb thought ungraciously.

“Okay, but they didn’t have it before, either, so what caused the huge shift in behavior? Are you absolutely sure they’re walking engines of evil and chaos or do you think there’s a slight chance the stories have been exaggerated over time?”

“Why are you defending them? They’re evil!” Zlesk said, getting flustered.

“I’m not defending them, I’m trying to separate fact from fiction. Maybe they’re cold-hearted psychopaths, but I find it hard to believe they would be as city-destroying, cartoonishly evil as your stories suggest. Psychopaths don’t shoot themselves in the foot for the fun of it.”

Zlesk opened his mouth and closed it again. “I suppose through a certain lens, their behavior does seem incongruent, but tell that to the ruins of Bravos, Lezmei, Carkolt, Nemicai, Ercolt, Gorsut. All cities destroyed by power-mad sindio. And let’s not forget the time Xen himself broke the line of Jestan, forever shattering keegan hopes of restoring our former glory!”

“What do they want?”

“Beside wanton destruction?” Zlesk asked.

“Yeah, besides that.”

The keegan shrugged. “The accumulation of power and knowledge.”

Nukes would definitely qualify…

Jeb felt a plan starting to form, but it wouldn’t work without a suicidal level of disregard for his own safety.

“Let’s start a grocery list. I need a  bunker buster, a pallet of C-4, blueprints for several different high-end military assets, really strong portable radio relays, the kind that make your fillings heat up, a device that can tell if ambient Myst has been manipulated within a short range and use that information to flip a switch.” He glanced at Eddie. “That’s your job.” He turned back to the towel. “The harder to come by, the better. Search military manufacturing plants, like boeing and such.”

“You’re planning on giving the monster more ammunition?” Zlesk demanded.

“Frankly, compared to the nukes he already has, laser and electromagnetic propulsion weapon systems kind of seem like not such a big deal.” Jeb said with a shrug.

“What’s a ‘nuke’?” Zlesk asked.

“Wait, this big bad evil guy Zlesk went on about at length has nukes!?” Ron asked.

“Probably. I’m also gonna need about…six red party balloons and some laxative.” Jeb said. The surrounding people went quiet, staring at him quizzically.

“I’m serious! Chop chop! We’ve got a teen girl to save, and if you want to earn your three hundred bulbs, you better impress her housewares!”

“Why are you always saving young girls anyway?” Eddie grumbled, the white-haired man giving Jeb a sour look. “I demand equal rescuing for the elderly.”

“Ooh, I can field this one.” Ron said, snagging a piece of Jeb’s notepad and clicking the pen before scribbling a descending curve graph.

“People’s rescueability is a result of a diminishing perceived societal value based on age, with a gender modifier. Before any other considerations, young girls are up here, and old men are down here.” He pointed at the top of the curve, then the bottom.

“Once you add in extra factors like commercial value and social status, you can compensate for advanced age and gender disadvantage. Your singular expertise combining Myst with tech dramatically inflates your social value and makes you about as rescueable as one point one five average little girls.”

“The fuck are you getting those numbers from?” Eddie demanded, glaring at the ginger necromancer.

“Get to work!” Jeb said, using his new Myst technique to make the sound rattle their brains.

***Later***

“I feel good about this plan.” Jeb said, wearing a vest of C-4 and looking at the hole in the side of the mountain, making sure to keep his thumb firmly pressed down on the dead-man’s switch.

Jeb turned back to the spectators, none of which dared approach within a hundred feet.

“I feel good about this plan!” Jeb shouted at them.

Ron waved from a safe distance.

Cowards, Jeb grumbled internally as he crouched and wormed his way into the lion’s den. It was pretty damn tight around the chest on the way in, and Jeb was barely able to squish through without blowing himself up.

Jeb’s reasoning for strapping C-4 to his body was thus: If he offered a trade for Casey’s freedom and the other guy simply decided he would take Jeb along with everything he brought, Jeb would blow himself up, take the top off the sindio’s underground base, and cause a shit-ton of property damage.

The idea was to appeal to the wizard’s cold calculations of self-interest. Either he accepted the deal and traded up for some spiffy human tech, or he lost a significant amount of property value from the sudden bloody explosion of Jeb. An enormous loss of time and effort.

Jeb had no illusions that the bomb would kill the sindio. He was fairly sure it wouldn’t. Hopefully the prospect of losing infrastructure would be just annoying enough to motivate him to make the trade, but not annoying enough to be insulting or make him angry.

The job wasn’t to win a fight, after all, it was just to get Casey’s freedom, then get out without being turned into a science experiment. And if that meant moving the goalposts on how to achieve it, then so be it.

Jeb dropped onto a damp stone floor in the lightless cave with a grunt, his eyes adjusting now that a single beam of soft light entered from behind him.

In front of his eyes, the far wall began to ripple, resolving into a membranous creature with long, grasping-

“Alpha one,” Jeb said, holding out his palm.

The flurry of blades erupting from his hand left chunks of the odd octopus-like creature twitching and bleeding on the ground.

“How’s my signal?” Jeb asked, flipping on the powerful walkie-talkie in his ear.

“So far so good.” Eddie’s voice called after him.

“First room is a small cave, about ten feet in all directions. Got a lot of bones of Ari’s former acquaintances. Only one route leading deeper into the complex…assuming we’re in the right place.”

“Yeah, assuming that.”

“The first threat is neutralized, start sending in ‘The Incentive’ behind me.”

“On it.” Eddies voice came through the earpiece.

Jeb pulled out a flashlight and peered into the deeper darkness leading further into the tunnel. He crept down the hall, trying not to slip in the pungent offal that was the odd monster’s refuse.

Jeb followed the tunnel about twenty feet when he paused, frowning. He flicked the flashlight off and confirmed it: there was natural lighting ahead. He crept deeper in and paused as the tunnel widened out into a larger chamber.

The lighting was coming from small holes in the ceiling above, about the size of his fist. The chamber itself was much cleaner than the previous one, cast in sunlight that streamed down from the air vents above. The beams of sunlight fell on several wooden tables with picture-perfect teacup muffins sitting on top of them.

Jeb had to stop and do a double take. He peered back into the previous room, where some of Casey’s minions were setting up a charge of C-4 above a disgusting monster corpse. Then he looked back into the muffin room.

Yep, there’s still muffins here.

Jeb felt a little like Alice in Wonderland as he walked around the tables, giving the sweets a wide berth. If anything was more obviously a trap, Jeb didn’t know what that was.

Still, he couldn’t help wondering what the hell the muffins were for. Jeb made sure to keep them visible in the corner of his eye as he explored the room. If they got up and tried to attack or some other equally strange behavior, Jeb wanted to be prepared for it.

He located two exits to the room, each of them leading subtly deeper into the mountain at a gradual slope, the floor growing cleaner and more well-cared for as they went.

Interesting.

Jeb saw a flicker of movement in the direction of the muffins, causing his heartbeat to skyrocket. He put his back to the wall and raised his hand, ready to blast the mutant confections with everything he had.

A fairy was halfway through burying his head in the muffin, his cheeks puffed out like a squirrel. He narrowed his eyes and clutched the sweet covetously.

“My muffin,” He growled before flying up and out through one of the fist-sized holes in the ceiling.

Well, that was odd, Jeb thought, before he noticed a tiny white sheet of paper underneath the muffin. It was covered in a dense script, but since it wasn’t English, he had no clue. Not even the small amount of keegan script he’d learned in the last few month was of any help.

“Wish I could read,” Jeb muttered, glancing over the tiny piece of paper.

Add that to the list of things to do.

***Kol Rejan, level 57 Courier***

“Of all the things I thought you’d be doing today, baking muffins wasn’t high on my list.” Kol said.

“I have to bake the muffins myself,” Vex said, pulling the tray of confections out of the oven. “That’s how the magic works.”

“And they just do whatever you tell them to?” He asked, reading the tiny note in his hand.

By consuming the above muffin, in whole or in part, I have nonverbally agreed to keep the identity of Vex the sindio a secret, not disclose any information in regards to him or his location, nor interfere with his work.

“Not really, for something as simple as a muffin-trap, you can really only get fairies to keep a secret for a month or two before the compulsion to honor the agreement fades. Demands that inconvenience them more, like forcing them to take on some arduous or dangerous task, fail so rapidly that they are basically worthless.”

Vex set the muffins on the counter and wiped his hands on his apron before pulling out the frosting and a spreading knife.

***Jeb***

Jeb crept to the leftmost tunnel, keeping well away from the muffins with their apparent booby-traps. From deeper in, Jeb could feel heat radiating outward in pulses, like the cave system itself was breathing.

When Jeb followed the tunnel to its conclusion, he found himself standing above a man-sized hole in the floor that lead down to some kind of furnace room. Hundreds of little people with dark, leathery skin and elongated faces worked with burning furnaces, churning out metal parts at a manic pace.

The hot air rose through the hole and blasted Jeb in the face, nearly singing his eyebrows as he looked into the room.

You know what this place is missing? Some C-4. Jeb thought, motioning for one of Casey’s creations to bring the explosives in.

The creature was a living ball of yarn, and it had no qualms sacrificing itself to free its creator, a character trait that Jeb intended to take full advantage of.

The living yarn carried the C-4 up to the hole, crawled in, then fastened itself to the ceiling, binding the explosive in place above the unsuspecting creature’s heads.

This is just a vent, so the other tunnel probably leads to another room.

That wasn’t necessarily true. This section of the sindios dungeon could just be the air exchange, and maybe Jeb wouldn’t find anything but vents. He might have to fly down into the middle of all those industrious midgets if the next tunnel didn’t bear fruit.

The next tunnel went downward at a more drastic angle, about thirty degrees, leading deep into the darkness until eventually it began to loop back in on itself, three spiraling turns, then it evened out, creating a flat hallway. The hallway was studded with doors on either side, with bright light leaking through the door jams. The acrid smell of chemicals wafted through the air, and Jeb heard the faint chatter of voices.

They were too distant to make out anything, but he could tell by the pitch that the creatures were small, and by the cadence, that they weren’t speaking English.

Not that that’s particularly surprising.

Jeb froze when a door on his right slammed open and a shiny pink-fleshed man toddled past with a large metal gizmo thrown over his shoulder. If he saw Jeb, he didn’t give any indication of it, simply hoisting the contraption and huffing mightily as he transported the part to a neighboring door.

Once the door closed behind the little creature, Jeb tiptoed through the hall as quickly as possible, not eager to be caught in the middle of the hall as someone went by.

Jeb continued past the hall of laborers, leaving behind the din of creation coming from the doorways. He entered something like a showroom, where row upon row of oddities were housed on pedestals, or tucked safely away behind thick glass shelves.

The ceiling was tall, like a hanger or the lobby of a museum, and the floor was oddly smooth and plain grey. It didn’t show any sign of seams or processing like a concrete or laminate might.

Jeb knelt and touched the floor.

It was warm.

There was what looked like a terminator leg, a big skeletal steel foot, rusted halfway through, with a sign printed in front of it in big blocky letters. Jeb knew a ‘hands off’ sign when he saw one, even if he couldn’t read it.

Near the corner of the room was what looked like a brass birdcage with a mote of void in it. It rolled darkness off of it like liquid nitrogen rolled mist off, and Jeb could see a faint lensing effect, where the light seemed to squeeze around it.

There was an odd shield filled with bubbling liquid, a piece of burning bark held above a permanent jet of flame, Literal lightning in a bottle, and…

Jeb paused, frowning as he took in object in the display case. It was a greyish metal, cone-shaped warhead with a familiar military stencil on the side of it.

W88

Jeb had decommissioned hundreds of them in Nellis, turning them into a puddle of water, explosives and scrap.

“There you are,” Jeb muttered to himself. At least it’s in good company. Jeb was under the impression any one of these objects could cause a substantial amount of harm.

“Where what is?” Eddie’s voice whispered through the earpiece.

“I think I just found the bomb I was missing…one of them, anyway,” Jeb said. The hell is the other one?

Out of the corner of his eye, the reality warping creature in the birdcage winked at him, seemingly responding to his voice. When Jeb glanced over, it was just a black void, no eyes at all.

Not gonna push my luck with that. Jeb thought, goosebumps spreading up his scalp.

Jeb scanned the rest of the showroom, taking in the tremendous amount of valuable and dangerous equipment.

“Put a half a kilogram at each of the corners of the room. That should be plenty.” Jeb was fairly sure that many of the things on display were fairly unstable, and freeing them would allow them to free others in turn.

Kinda makes me wonder why security isn’t that great, Jeb thought to himself, glancing around. This was SCP level shit, and it was all crowded together in the same room with no guards at all. That was practically negligent.

I mean, the entrance was an air vent, covered by a giant tentacle monster, but he wasn’t that hard to kill.

Jeb would have expected a guard at least at the end of the hall, between the research labs and the showrooms, to make sure the eggheads didn’t knock over a death-machine.

Either that or the cases are more sophisticated than I originally thought.

Jeb looked good and hard at the cases containing the various oddities. He couldn’t see anything at all, just the ever-present neutral Myst, filling the air with a silvery grey that hung low like a fog machine.

Wait a minute…

Jeb narrowed his eyes, studying the movement of the Myst, his eyes widening as he spotted the occasional straight line tugging its way through the Myst, drawing it into unnatural shapes.

There was something there, interacting with the Myst, but it was nearly invisible against the neutral Myst.

‘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.’

Is that what he meant by? Jeb thought, eyebrows raising. That would be invaluable to learn for disguising his traps from other Myst-users.

Focus.

“Better put some on the ceiling too, the cases look like they’re shielded.

The black mote of void winked at him again, a single eye opening when he hit a specific pitch. This time Jeb saw the eyeball.

That’s probably okay.

From the showroom, there were four major halls that looked big enough for semis to roll through, and at least six minor doors for simple foot traffic.

Jeb didn’t have any idea where to go in particular, so he just started opening doors. Admittedly, randomly opening doors in a powerful enemy’s base didn’t seem like the greatest idea, but it was overshadowed by his idea of walking in wearing three kilos of C-4, so it all worked out fine.

The first door was an empty room that looked something like an orthodontist’s office. It was dark and cold. The second unleashed the smell of sewage, poorly lit and leading deep into the earth. Jeb guessed it either lead to the septic system, or perhaps monster or human pens. The third room had a dozen or so of the little pink men working on computers, chattering back and forth in their high-pitched voices, accompanied by the clicking of keys and the faint smell of coffee.

They seemed to be working on learning how to use the computer systems, specifically trying to debug software designed to run several different human machines.

I’ve got enough insurance. Jeb thought. This wasn’t about winning, after all, it was about making a good impression. At some point, the plan necessitated him getting discovered.

“Did you try turning it off and back on again?” Jeb asked.

The little pink men turned and stared at him, their jaws hanging open.

“I’d like to speak to your boss, could you tell me where to find him?” Jeb asked, keeping his tone even and polite.

“Main hall, that way,” one of them, pointing in the direction of one of the semi-sized openings.

“How did he get past the security system?” one of them whispered.

“Don’t ask me. He’s probably on the whitelist and got lost.

“If he was supposed to be here, he wouldn’t be lost.”

“Hey, that worked!” one of them said with glee as the plasma cutter turned on again and started listening to instructions.

“Thank you much.” Jeb said, nodding before pulling his head out of the room and facing the direction they’d pointed.

The whitelist? That sounded ominous. Jeb really hoped there wasn’t something in place to vaporize intruders and that was why there were no guards. Jeb’s plan and instant vaporization didn’t mesh well.

Who am I kidding? It’s probably par for the course.

Jeb walked toward the indicated main hall, whistling nonchalantly as he passed by several more rooms. Foot traffic became more and more heavy, with keegan and melas primarily, along with the pink shortstacks and the leather-skin midgets, but they tended to ignore Jeb. A few gave curious glances at his odd jacket, but none of them seemed to know what C-4 was offhand. Otherwise they would be more concerned.

Jeb was about halfway to the end of the hall when he felt a sudden compulsion to take  his explosives off. Hmm… Jeb felt like a passenger in his own body as he watched himself take the jacket off and fold it neatly up against the wall.

There was a click as a P.A. system turned on.

“Would the idiot planting explosives please report to the executive meeting room for debriefing?”

A green line flared to life above Jeb’s head, pulsing forward to indicate which way he should go. Suddenly he was in control of his body again. Curious, Jeb tried to pick up his jacket, but it was like a new year’s resolution: he just couldn’t muster the give-a-shit to follow through.

Interesting. My heart rate is steady. I should be terrified. Must be under some kind of control.

Jeb shrugged and glanced up, following the pulsing green line above his head. It led down the main hall a ways, turning off at a pair of hardwood double doors. Beyond was a desk was a small room with a keegan secretary behind it. She gave a twitch of an eyebrow, then pressed a button under her desk, and part of the wall behind her shimmered before vanishing entirely, showing a familiar figure seated at a large wooden table, his henchman standing next to him, along with a nearly red melas man with fancy horns, and a couple representatives of the other two races living in the dungeon compound.

“Good afternoon, My name is Vex,” the black-robed keegan said as Jeb entered. “Please, have a seat.”

“Did you learn English in a week?” Jeb asked, hopping up into his seat.

“Too much effort. I added this translator to the executive meeting room to deal with sindio from other continents a couple centuries ago.” He said, tapping a flat metal disk in the center of the table.

“Apologies about the chair, we don’t have any human-sized furniture yet.”

“I feel like I’m at the kiddie table,” Jeb muttered, his legs dangling from the edge of his seat.

“Indeed. Tea?”

“Just a little.” Jeb said, nodding and accepting a cup from one of the pink midgets.

It wasn’t bad.

“I’m fascinated. It’s not often a potential test subject who slips the leash comes back to me on their own. Even less often they have a poorly thought-out plan to commit suicide in front of me to…make a statement?”

“It’s not a suicide plan, per se,” Jeb said, glancing around. “More insurance than anything else. Is the Myst in this room stable?”

“Of course. The only room with tighter control over the Myst inside it would be some of the experimental labs.”

Jeb took a deep breath, had a brief flash of insight about the nature of life, then took his thumb off the dead man’s switch.