Chapter 22: The Gate (Patreon)

Jeb tore the wriggling Ability out of Meyers’ head, shoving the System-generated living packet of information into his pocket before slipping the ring back on his finger one-handed.

Jeb kicked the general’s corpse before hauling himself up into the air, above the reach of the army ants who would notice him any second. They were busy with their black doppelgangers, but better safe than sorry.

Jeb glanced at his broken arm, feeling along the break with his fingertips.

Yep, it’s a spiral fracture.

Jeb took a deep breath and decided to take care of the problem before his dopamine high fled and made everything ten times harder.

Jeb grabbed the bone with telekinesis and slotted it back together, choking back a scream. Once it was set properly, he fastened the two sides together with small pins of telekinesis through the bone.

Not a permanent solution, Jeb thought, experimentally flexing his left arm. There was some swelling, but he had full range of motion. The telekinetic pins would damage the tissue if he left them for long, though, so this was just a right now solution.

Now, where’s this Vex guy keeping the nukes? Jeb thought, casting his gaze down either side of the hall. Two directions with no particular indicator which way led to what.

Probably the direction the butler came from, Jeb decided. He had nothing more concrete to work on, so simply picking a direction and going for it would be better than sitting there spinning his wheels.

Jeb turned and landed in front of Zlesk and Ron. The keegan had Nancy over his shoulder, and Ron was controlling a tight formation of zombie bug-monsters around the duo. Sweat beaded on the ginger’s temples as he raised another zombie to fill a new gap in their defense.

“Get Nancy out of here. I’ll keep going,” Jeb said, pointing toward the gap in the ceiling.

Zlesk looked at the ceiling and nodded before leading the charge.

“But…” Ron started, hesitation written across his face.

“Zlesk can’t get Nancy out of here by himself,” Jeb said with a shrug. “And you can’t help me much if you’re too busy trying to keep her alive.”

“Damnit!” Ron straightened his shoulders and followed after Zlesk, his chevron of zombies cutting through the monsters like the prow of a ship. “We’ll be back!” he shouted over his shoulder as they made for the exit.

“I doubt it,” Jeb muttered, lifting himself off the ground, watching the duo for a moment. Jeb straightened out his body and headed the direction the melas butler had come from, flying above the chaos, relatively safe from the aggressive monsters flooding the halls beneath him.

Jeb was halfway past the butler’s corpse when the wall decided to reach out and bitch-slap him.

Jeb’s FMO shields popped, along with his Butler Ambush shields, then finally his Armor shields as they protected him from being crushed. The massive lum pof stone bulled through the protections with pure inertia and knocked him out of the air.

Jeb hit the far wall, then felt a moment of nauseating weightlessness in his gut before he slammed into the stone floor.

“Ow,” he rasped before using telekinesis to yank himself up and to the side. Lay still and earn yourself a coup de grâce. The floor made a mouth-like chomping motion, as though it were trying to eat him, but he was already off the ground.

Where you at?

Jeb scanned the hall and spotted the butler resting up against the wall, looking…singed.

From what Jeb understood, melas could tolerate being on fire to some extent, in the same way that a lantern wick could tolerate it. Mostly it was the oil that burned, but the wick burned too, eventually.

The left half of the butler’s uniform was simply gone, along with most of the flesh around his left elbow. About halfway to his shoulder where the skin came back, it burned with a vibrant blue flame, rising up his neck and chin to cover his expression.

Jeb filled in the expression himself.

Yeah…he’s probably pissed.

The butler’s good hand twitched above the dungeon core at his side, and swarms of flying army ants materialized beside Jeb, seemingly irate about being born from nothing.

Crap, Jeb thought, building a tight layer of compressed air around himself as he swooped toward the medium-rare butler.

The dungeon itself tried to slap him out of the air again, but Jeb was able to wrench himself out of the way. But in the moment his gaze wasn’t on the butler, the melas had summoned another army ant in front of himself out of thin air.

Jeb’s eyes widened at the monster looming over him and he unleashed reflexive telekinetic spears. The creature blocked Jeb’s wild attack with a single flat shield before it slapped him out of the air. Jeb tumbled across the cold stone, bouncing twice before he lifted himself off the ground. It had an appetite, after all.

The swarm of fliers moved to attack now that Jeb’s shielding was faltering. Each one was about a foot long, its carapace swept forward to create a single blade. They looked a bit like someone had bred a sleeker rhinocerous beetle and then sharpened the horn into a stabbing implement.

Their wings were in the middle of their bodies, right next to their eyes, which had a clear view because of the divot in their horns that allowed them to get a (mostly) unobstructed view of their target.

Their target, in this case, being Jeb.

ZZZZZZ!!!

Jeb flicked up a telekinetic shield the instant before one of the flying drones impaled him.

Damnit, Jeb thought, falling out of the air for a moment as he was forced to choose between maintaining his bone-pins or staying aloft.

Jeb let his arm hang limp, gritting his teeth as he split his thread, creating a second bowl of telekinetic force, trapping the little creatures against his shield like an errant spider.

Jeb dropped his flight for an instant to create blades of force inside the container, spinning them as fast as he could, creating a bug-paste filled with shrapnel. Jeb picked his flight up before he dropped too far, a chunk of heavy stone sailing over his head, having accidentally dodged it. Jeb’s brows rose.

“Have your bugs back,” Jeb said, transforming his container full of pulped insects into a sling and launching them at the butler.

The butler was entirely unaffected, sheltered as he was by the bigger, shinier army ants.

Matter of fact, I can’t even see him through his entourage, Jeb thought, eyes narrowing.

Now the question was, did the butler move while he was hidden? Jeb would have, but this guy… Who knew?

Jeb made out a faint plume of smoke billowing up from his enemy’s last known location.

Odds this is a trap? Sixty percent or so.

Jeb scanned the hall, bobbing and weaving so the walls didn’t have a stationary target to squish. As hard as he looked, he couldn’t find anything else that might give away the melas’s current position.

Well, time to roll the dice.

Jeb encased himself in a teardrop-shaped barrier of telekinetic force. He turned and barreled toward the shield-bearer protecting the butler with every ounce of speed he could pull out, ramming forward like a runaway semi.

The creature braced itself, and Jeb thought he could make out faint Myst moving through its shield like a circulatory system. It seemed like it was prepared to tank any kind of attack.

Too bad you’re not gonna get to use it.

Jeb tipped the front spike of the teardrop into the ground, cutting a couple inches into the ruined stone floor the instant before he hit the shielded creature.

The massive shield-creature got flipped like a pancake.

Jeb shoved his way underneath the flailing monster, aiming for the smoke signal.

All that remained of the butler was a slowly burning vest throwing up a conspicuous amount of smoke.

Trap. Called it! Jeb thought as he tried to backpedal.

A huge monster camouflaged to look like rubble lunged forward from beneath the burning clothes and slammed into Jeb’s shield bubble, locking half a dozen insectoid limbs around his barrier, creating a cage of flesh-rending chitin.

Then it started squeezing.

Jeb panted, looking for a way out, but there was no room for him to escape the sharp limbs encasing him in every direction.

Jeb glanced to the side and spotted the butler watching him, his partially skeletal left arm dangling uselessly beside him as he manipulated the dungeon core.

Who allowed butlers to be so badass, anyway? Jeb thought as he tried to look for a way out. He tried using his second string of Myst to cut the creature’s limbs off, but was starting to run out of gas. The second sting was sharp, but the creature’s rubble-looking carapace was incredibly sturdy, even at the joints.

Damnit!

The flesh-rending spines on the inside of Jeb’s shield began to break through his construct, so Jeb made another shield, much closer to his skin. The smaller space meant Jeb would have to spend less energy to keep it up, but it was also an admission that he was flagging.

The creature opened its gaping maw and started gnawing on Jeb’s shield like a jawbreaker, quickly joined by the shieldbearer he’d bum-rushed.

“Goddamnit, this doesn’t look great,” Jeb muttered. He was considering going for his foot, but the other guy would see it coming a mile away and dodge. Plus there was no guarantee that the bugs would stop trying to eat him even if he killed the butler.

Matter of fact, I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t stop.

Jeb needed a distraction. Or a miracle.

“You were a worthy opponent,” the butler said, giving Jeb a nod as he limped closer—the only thing he’d said the entire time. “I will give you this opportunity to surrender and live, but if you force me to kill you, I will remember your struggle.”

Oh, that makes me feel better, Jeb thought, rolling his eyes.

Pop!

Jeb heard an odd popping sound followed by a faint squish.

Pop!

Pop pop pop pop pop pop!

There was a flicker of light, and the two monsters chewing on Jeb’s dwindling shield fell apart into bloody chunks that rained down around them.

Jeb and the butler stared at the chunked monsters in confusion.

Jeb recovered first.

Jeb launched himself toward the butler with every ounce of speed he could eke out of his telekinesis, flopping his broken arm over the melas man’s good arm and sucker-punching him right in the jaw, reinforcing his strike with a string of telekinetic Myst.

The melas’s eyes rolled back in his head before he slumped to the ground, the dungeon core slipping out of his grasp.

“You were an opponent,” Jeb said, straightening his shirt. “I will remember I got lucky.”

A wheezing gurgle escaped from the Melas’s lips. Jeb glanced around and noticed that all the army ants, of every variety, were dead. They’d all been slaughtered. But that didn’t mean more wouldn’t spawn.

And if they did, there was a nice, juicy butler there to eat.

Jeb rolled his eyes and grabbed the melas under the good arm, hoisting him over his shoulders before taking off.

***Casey Thompson***

“Alright, the final checks are complete. Let’s play God,” the sindio said, rubbing his hands together before reaching for an oversized mad-scientist type lever.

Just then, a familiar sight floated in through the bloodstained hall, drawing everyone’s attention.

Jeb, with Lien over his shoulder. The butler who’d defeated her so handily looked half-dead, bleeding from his swollen face and a good portion of his arm burned away.

Jeb didn’t look much better. The brown-haired man’s clothes were practically shredded, covered in blood and dust so thick it had achieved a paste in some places, every visible section of his skin was covered in cuts and bruises, and his left arm hung limp beside him.

But Jeb was the one who was conscious, to Casey’s disbelief.

He BEAT Lien? she thought, blinking. Lien had handled her like a child last time they’d met. Casey couldn’t help but wonder what Jeb’s stats were, or if that even was the difference between them.

The momentary flutter of hope died as Vex straightened, stepping away from the lever.

She’d briefly forgotten. Vex had treated a squad of eight enforcers like children. Toddlers, even. One beat-up Jeb wasn’t going to make a difference.

“Sorry about leaving you guys,” Jeb said as his gaze landed on the kneeling enforcers. “I had some stuff to take care of and wound up taking the long way around.”

“I can’t believe it…” Vex said, his voice echoing through the silence as Jeb let Lien slide down against the wall. “You actually got Lien to take off his shirt.”

“It was mostly burned off, really,” Jeb said, somehow immune to the oppressive atmosphere. How the fuck does he do something so suicidal? Casey hoped that she could one day give as few fucks.

“Why bring him with you? A hostage?” Vex’s gaze looked like it could shred steel as he took in the sight of his man bleeding against the wall.

“Oh, no. He just offered me a chance to surrender, and as a man of action, when someone gives you the chance to surrender, that kind of…defines the rules of engagement?” Jeb said sheepishly.

“There’s that Fae blood acting up again,” Vex said, his finger twitching.

A bolt of pure white leapt from the Sindio, sinking into the melas’s chest. The butler let out a harsh gasp, his face recovering as flesh writhed down his arm, repairing damage Casey would have sworn couldn’t be fixed.

Oh great. Now he’s totally fixed, and we’ve gotta fight that monster too, Casey thought sourly. Lien was the almost-unbeatable icing on the totally unwinnable cake.

“Lien, you’re off the clock. Take the rest of the night off,” Vex said.

“My lord.” Lien levered himself to his feet, casting an unreadable expression towards Jeb before grabbing a piece of the wall and peeling it off and throwing the pale stone over his shoulders. Somehow the stone drooped over his shoulders like melting cheese for a moment before it took on colors and texture. In a matter of heartbeats, the butler was dressed and presentable again.

Lien took a handkerchief out of his pocket and wiped away the last of the blood on his face as he walked out of the room.

“I appreciate you sparing my man, Mr. Trapper,” Vex said, turning his attention back to Jeb. “Good butlers are horrifically time-consuming to scout. For that, I will give you the opportunity to try and ‘thwart my evil plans’.”

Jeb chuckled and scratched his head. “Much appreciated.”

The two of them squared off, and Casey’s heart began hammering in her chest. She knew, she KNEW Jeb had no chance, but the human inside her couldn’t help but root for the underdog. That, and if he wins we don’t die.

The two stared at each other, and then things started happening. Jeb tensed his body slightly, and the Sindio tapped his foot. Other than that, Casey felt a slight breeze that seemed to stir up around the two of them.

“Come now, you did that last time, and yes, I can feel the one hidden behind it.”

Little puffs of Jeb’s sun-colored Myst emanated from the floor as he reached into his pocket and hurled a…pipe at the sindio.

“Yes, I saw this tactic last time as well,” the sindio said, snatching it out of the air and running a gossamer membrane of Myst through the  pipe, coming away with a mote of Jeb’s Myst from inside the pipe.

“I suppose you placed the business end of this trap back in the hallway?” Vex said, peering at the pipe before putting it in his coat.

“Come now, where’s the invention? Where’s the research? The relentless dedication to pushing the boundaries of what is possible with Myst? Show me you’re more than an admittedly impressive collection of clever schemes!”

Jeb’s expression darkened as the sindio easily dismantled each of his gambits.

“Snake basket.”

A lance of pure Myst fired toward the Sindio before detonating in a burst of heat and light. It happened too fast for Casey to catch what happened, but even at more than thirty feet away, she could feel the hairs on her brows being singed.

“Hahaha! You figured out Zesh’nei’s Translation!” The sindio thumbed his chin. “Well, most of it.”

“Suppressing fire,” Jeb said, tugging the ring off his finger.

A moment later, the ring latched itself onto Jeb’s revolver, which had drawn itself and turned toward the sindio, hammer cocking back.

“Seen it,” the sindio said, waving a dismissive hand and releasing a tight beam of Myst that intersected the gun and caused it to clatter uselessly to the ground.

“You pitiful fool,” Vex said, shaking his head as Jeb began looking increasingly desperate, his lips peeling away from his teeth in a determined snarl. Casey’s heart hurt as her hope turned sour.

“I gave you that much time, and this is what you’ve done with it? A little fireworks? You’re not even using Broshaw’s collar to regulate the flow of Myst, and one branch in Zesh’nei’s Translation? ONE? It’s no wonder it explodes. Multiples of seven are far more stable. Allow me to demonstrate.”

A huge construct made entirely of Myst emerged from Vex’s palm. It looked something like a Christmas tree made of hundreds of interlocking loops that fed out of and back into the central thread of Myst. It was widest at the base near the sindio’s palm, a pale blue that narrowed and gradually changed in color as it went forward, until it was a very pale yellow color near the tip, which hovered in front of Jeb’s face.

“See? I translated my natural Myst into one that makes you think you’re a little girl named Sasha.”

Jeb growled and smacked the Myst aside with his own, the veins in his temple throbbing as his Myst string grew three branches, which curled back and fed themselves into the center. The string seemed to grab and compress air around it, heating up as it did, until a whip of white-hot air dominated the air between them.

Did Jeb just make a lightsaber-whip? Casey thought, jaw dropping.

The length of devastating heat lunged out like a snake, trying to wrap around the sindio and crush/cut/burn him to nothing.

The whip missed somehow, flickering around the Sindio, who seemed totally at ease, his skull-faced grin lit up by the light of Jeb’s weapon.

“No, no, NO! You’ll never hit another wizard like that, you pathetic fool! You’re still solidly in the Physics category, when any spellslinger worth his salt will dip into the Conceptual, at least a little.

“Your attacks are not meant to hit me. They have no place in the grand design. It’s all just hot air, waving about and hoping for the best. They can’t hit me because I’m warded against it. I’m not meant to lose, just as you are not meant to win.

“Let me give you an example,” Vex said, the pipe in his hand glowing momentarily. “This pipe is going to deal damage to the back of your head. Try to avoid it.” The sindio flicked the pipe forward, and Jeb flinched, trying to take a step back.

The pipe rolled under the veteran’s pegleg, which slipped and caused Jeb to fall, smacking the back of his head against the floor.

“Couldn’t avoid it, could you? Conceptual magic is the precursor to Causality magic, but with your pathetic showing, I don’t think you’ll live that long.”

Jeb lunged back to his feet and tried the heat whip again to no avail. The heat sputtered out and exploded as Jeb seemingly tried to change the spell mid-cast.

“Hahaha! Pathetic! Your understanding is lacking! The fact is, conceptual Myst is just a subtle deviation of intent away from any Myst. A fool like you could never find The Direction That Doesn’t Exist!”

Jeb scowled, panting.

A cleared throat cut through the tense silence between Jeb and Vex.

The keegan minion who’d up until now been content to lean against the wall and watch passively raised a hand.

“Yes, Kol?” Vex asked, his tone terse, like a man interrupted in the middle of a passion project.

“Are you…giving him…pointers?” the keegan asked hesitantly.

Casey squeezed her eyes shut and blinked a few times when she saw the ancient monster blush.

“…No!” Vex waved his hand.

“Herk!” Jeb let out a strangled cry as invisible bonds snapped up around his arms, legs and neck, dragging him to join Casey and the others.

In a matter of seconds, Jeb was just as helpless as the rest of them.

“Despite what you fools have been led to believe, I’m not actually trying to destroy the world,” Vex said, folding his hands behind his back as he paced in front of them.

“I am merely trying to give myself the option of destroying the world, should I grow bored with it,” Vex said, raising a finger. “Big difference.”

“Anyway, here we go.” The sindio reached out and tugged on the big lever that dominated the metal apparatus in the middle of the room. The grey Myst flickered into being inside the silver gate, creating a whirling grey portal into the fifth dimension.

“Now let’s just get the belt moving…” Vex muttered to himself, throwing another lever. The oversized nuke began rumbling forward, disappearing into the swirling grey Myst.

“Jeb,” Casey said, clinging onto the last shreds of hope. “You made a trap or something, right? Some kind of clever backup plan that you’re gonna trigger now that he’s distracted, right? It’ll break the machine or something?”

Jeb turned his head and gave her a flat look that was all the answer she needed. The words just drove it home.

“I did. A ton of ‘em. He disarmed all of them when he tapped his foot.”

Well, shit, Casey thought, the blood draining from her face.

***Jebediah Trapper***

What is this guy’s deal? Jeb thought, eyes narrowed as he studied the Sindio, trying to pick his moment to break out. He hadn’t realized it until the other keegan had called Vex out on it, but the ancient wizard had been coaching him.

I mean, the guy’s obviously smart enough to know that mocking me by saying exactly what I’m doing wrong will allow me to improve myself and give me hints for how to advance my Myst control.

Was there some sort of selfish reason for it? Perhaps the keegan was lonely being the only wizard game in town, or maybe he simply enjoyed teaching magic?

Or was he boosting Jeb’s power so he could be a more useful pawn in the future? Jeb was highly aware that these reasons were not mutually exclusive.

As he was trying to unpackage the sindio’s seemingly contradictory behavior, the final tail fins of the bomb slipped into the fifth dimension without fanfare, leaving the belt empty.

Jeb winced, expecting to be immediately disintegrated or suffer from a sudden heart attack, or whatever would happen when a nuke got translated into pure potential.

Nothing.

Jeb glanced around at the other restrained enforcers, who shared his confusion.

Vex, on the other hand, seemed to know exactly what was going on. With all the pomp and circumstance of an air conditioning repair guy, he tapped at blinking lights in the gate, muttering to himself.

“Little less tacky than I thought, gonna need to up the draw to grab experience from people who’ve been dead a while. How could so few people understand how these work and yet they’re still the most fearsome weapon on the planet? You know what the most fearsome weapon on the planet should be? Rocks. People have been killing stuff with rocks forever. Matter of fact, maybe I should put a rock through this thing next, just to see what happens.”

He tapped a few more lights before making a satisfied grunt. “There we go. All prepped, now I just need to—”

The grey swirl of Myst turned black, with a spattering of light that looked like stars. It would seem like the portal had opened into the depths of space, were it not for the fact that the stars moved in tandem, and the ominous purple color at the edges.

The gate bulged outward into the room for a moment, as if it were acting as a membrane trying to keep some horrible thing from entering their dimension.

“Ah, shit.” Vex gulped audibly.

Then the membrane failed.

A creature made of pure law emerged from the portal. It had elongated steel quills for claws, arms of delicate scrollwork, and a body made of carved stone, covered in a thousand dead languages. It glared down at the sindio with eyes made of harsh, gleaming light that seemed to scour away anything it found wanting.

The floor around the sindio melted, just a little.

“Xen Calvex, you have overstepped your bounds and infringed upon a power the gods have declared forbidden to mortals. I am your punishment.”