Chapter 24 take 2 (Patreon)

The jagged teeth of the eel slammed into Jeb’s chest, parting the flesh like soft clay. Jeb’s hand clamped down on the creature’s neck, aiming to yank it out of himself. The creature’s thick muscles held it in place, the slimy skin preventing him from getting a good grip on it.

Strangely enough, there was no pain. Like before when he’d parted his ribs to remove the creature in the first place, it seemed fifth-dimension jeb was made out of play-doh.

Jeb’s hand slipped off the neck again, right before the thing greedily pushed its jaws deeper and flexed, locking on to his very bone. That hurt.

Something rushed through Jeb at a pace he couldn’t even comprehend. He felt like he’d tried to fit his mouth around the hoover dam, and for some goddamn reason, he hadn’t simply exploded. The rush of energy filled him up until he was fit to bursting, then it kept going.

Seed-Jeb let out a pained gasp as he tried to detatch the grasping mouth, power violently rampaging through heretofore unknown channels throughout his body. Little creeks had turned into raging rivers, sweeping entire families downstream.

His skin browned and sizzled like a well-cooked burger, the Maillard reaction radiating outward from the round wound in the center of his chest.

Jeb could feel the heat and pressure mounting behind his eyeballs, threatening to shove them out of his skull if he didn’t find a path of lesser resistance.

The brown skin blackened and cracked, and somehow, Jeb was still alive, despite the pain and the enormous energy surging through him. The cracks in his skin began to leak an all-too-familiar white light, even as the light from the nuke beneath him dimmed further.

Jeb’s brain finally decided enough was enough and shut down, causing Jeb’s eyes to roll back into his head and his body to collapse like a puppet with its string’s cut.

The last thing Jeb saw was something big looming over him, offering him another eel.

Why the hell would I want another eel? Jeb briefly thought before it got shoved into his chest, adding insult to injury.

***Jebediah Trapper***

Instance error resolved.

Rebooting System…

Congratulations! You have Beaten Lagross the Suppressor in a one-on-one duel. Your Power is beyond reproach!

Lagross’s Power Accolade Granted!

+5 Body +5 Myst +5 Nerve

>>>Error<<<

Several Accolades missing or corrupted. Contacting System Admin. Please hold.

An impact across Jeb’s face jolted him back to consciousness.

“Whazza?” He grunted, sitting up. His throat was hoarse, and he felt like week-old dogshit.

What the hell just happened?Jeb thought as he nearly bumped his forehead into Vresh’s. He remembered getting dragged toward the portal by the rope, not being smart enough to let go and then…

Jeb furrowed as the memories came to him like a half-remembered dream. There was a snowflake ball of himself, and it interacted with billions of other things…

Like a half-remembered dream, Jeb’s brain systematically deleted the memories that didn’t adhere to Jeb’s understanding of reality. Gradually, the memory of what happened inside the portal slipped away, leaving Jeb grasping at straws and frantically making mental notes of certain things his infinite possibilities had learned that he wanted to remember for later.

Kol-

The assassin that keeps trying to kill me. Really warped sense of honor. Pissed that he hasn’t been able to complete his job. Doesn’t have much in the way of actual attack abilities, primarily an ambush hunter, but carries one or two get-out-of-jail cards at any given time. Tried to shoot me in Vegas.

Vresh –

Leads with her right hand. Uses portals to enhance her physical range, to devastating effect. Shares some kind of power accumulation Vow with her father…sensitive earlobes and lower back.

The nuke –

Big fish-thing with….

Jeb’s memories failed him as he tried to organize what he’d learned. He got a vague sense of unease when he thought about it, but his memories of the outlandish experience had fled.

A jolt of alarm travelled through him as he looked around the room. They were back in Vex’s laboratory, sans nuke. All the lights were out except the faint glow from the machinery and the pale grey light from the swirling portal itself.

Looking at that light made Jeb’s brainitch. Jeb glanced around, hoping to see the other members of the enforcer company, but they were all seemingly absent.

Are they still around? Jeb thought, squinting, and fearing the worst.

“The nuke?” Jeb whispered.

“I…I thought we’d dragged it back out,” she said, her voice uncertain. She held up her fingers as if reciting something she’d memorized.

“You and the nuke both went limp so I grabbed you and it. Kol had me write a letter to Vex, and we were able to follow it back to the tear in the dimension. Then we…dragged you both here.

She ticked off her last finger.

“You followed the letter?” Jeb asked, frowning, glancing past Vresh. Kol was lying on his back with a rather large bruise on his skull where Vresh had knocked him out.

“Hey, that’s the sentence I committed to memory the first couple seconds after realizing I was losing memories. Don’t ask me what I meant. I don’t remember.”

“Then where’s the nuke?” Jeb asked, taking another look around the laboratory. It looked abandoned. There was no sign of the previous battle. No damage, all the blood was gone.

“I can answer that one,” A familiar voice caught their attention

Click! The lights in the ceiling blinked on, revealing Vex standing in the doorway, wearing what looked like loose-fitting silk pajamas, a nightcap, and carrying a glass of milk.

They locked eyes with the sindio for a heart-stopping moment.

“Good evening. You guys got back quick.” He said, taking a drink.

“Head down that hall behind you. You take the right fork and go to the holding cells,” He said, pointing to Vresh. “And you take the left, report to the examination room and strap yourself into the table.” He directed his finger to Jeb. “I’ll be along shortly.”

“I’d rather not,” Jeb said, looking for some way to escape, turn the tide, survive. Maybe I can explode the Myst Engine and create enough of a distraction to-

“I didn’t say please.” Vex said.

Jeb felt a slight tingle.

“Okay then!” Jeb’s body said without his permission, standing up and walking toward the opposite side of the room. Vresh seemed similarly under control, as she immediately started walking toward the exit beside him.

Well, this is horrifying, Jeb thought, pounding against the invisible barrier between his thoughts and his motor control. He tried to scream, stop himself, make his body go limp, access his Myst, anything he could think of. None of it worked.

The two of them marched silently beside each other for a time before splitting off to the left and right. Vresh in the corner of his eye became a rapidly diminishing series of footsteps behind him. He couldn’t even move his eyes.

Jeb’s body marched into a clean room with a solid steel table in the center. He laid down in it and started strapping himself in, all the while his mind was desperately looking for some way to turn the situation around.

But there just wasn’t any place to start.Jeb felt no one single thing preventing him from reasserting control. He had no idea how the sindio had accomplished it, and even if he did, he had no idea what the counter would be.

All jeb could do was watching him strap himself in and stare at the ceiling.

The cracked ceiling.

Oh, I can already tell this is gonna suck, Jeb thought as his brain tried to distract itself from the absolute hopeless terror of the moment by focusing on a different absolute hopeless terror that had already come and gone.

It didn’t help much.

Is that a piece of metal shining through the crack or just a weird shadow? Jeb thought. Despite his growing panic, his heart retained a steady beat, implying that even Jeb’s sympathetic nervous system was under control.

Well, that’s fucking great. Is he interfering in the signals somewhere in my spine?  Was jeb a paraplegic now, turned into a puppet by Vex?

Wait, I can’t move my eyes, so it’s gotta be higher up, like in the brain somewhere? That was spooky. How could Jeb know what he was thinking or doing was his own, when Vex was literally manipulating the stuff that made Jeb who he was.

A fine tune spell no the motor cortex? But I don’t even know if the eyes are moved by the motor cortex. Jeb knew far too little about the brain to risk trying to wrestle Vex’s control away.

The best-case scenario seemed like it would be a lobotomy.

“Sorry for the wait,” Vex said, swooping into the examination room and swiftly bolting the last cuff on Jeb’s left hand. Well, now I’m well and truly fucked.

Jeb sighed. His eyes widened.

I can sigh! I can widen my eyes.

Jeb immediately set about trying to bust out of the restraints, but they were predictably too sturdy.

Vex stepped back and waited, until Jeb wore himself out.

“You done?” he asked as Jeb paused, panting.

“Mmmaybe?”

“Excellent. Let’s get started.”Vex said, before the ceiling opened up, revealing steel.

It’s real! Jeb’s body shuddered as adrenaline was dumped into his system.

It’s happening again! It’s happening again! Jeb began hyperventilating as the steel beam fell onto his chest and crushed him, rendering him unable to breath. It’s going to crush my lungs and kill me. I’m already dead! This is hell and it’s just this over and over and over and over….

Jeb’s logical brain was shoved aside as he thrashed in place, screaming himself hoarse, and if he could have reached his arms to gnaw them off, he would’ve.

Jeb felt a slight pinch, then the steel beam retracted back into the ceiling. Jeb’s body shuddered in place, flooded with adrenaline, and nothing to do with it.

“Come now, it’s not that bad,” Vex tutted before going back to a magical screen and scrolling through a readout comprised entirely of foreign letters, and the occasional picture, sort of like an MRI.

Vex tapped his fingers against the counter as he read the printout.

“Oh my, that won’t do at all,” Vex murmured to himself.

“What won’t do?” Jeb demanded, craning his neck to try and get a better view of the screen.

“The Accolade I designed has a fatal flaw. It would never actually work. Oh well, At least I got quite a bit of good data about the amount of stress the fifth dimension cantolerate in regards to high concentrations of nuclear fission. So I guess this wasn’t a total waste of time.

“What?”

The accolade he designed?The ACCOLADE he designed? Jeb’s mind immediately flipped back to the books, the eel, the spine, the pipe. All things he’d seen or removed, all stitched onto him with…

Black strings, Jeb faintly remembered the sensation of black strings that seemed to defy the natural order of the fifth dimension. Matter of fact, he could remember them because they followed the rules for Jeb’s reality more than anything else.

The bomb had black strings. Jeb was sure of it. He didn’t remember much, but the impression of black strings…the nuke never made it back to the real world, but he, Vresh and Kol did. That meant…

“Do I have a nuke inside of me right now!?” Jeb asked.

“Ummm….” Vex’s gaze slid off of Jeb’s face.

“Get it out!”

“Nnnno? This seems like the ideal moment to point out that if you enforcers had kept your sweaty philistine paws to yourselves, I could have concluded my experiment without incident.”

“What did you mean by fatal flaw?” Jeb demanded.

“Oh look, there’s the guard to take you to the holding cells!” Vex moved aside, and a small army of the tight-skinned pink people with leather armor detatched his cuffs from the table and hauled Jeb off of the slab.

“Hey, HEY!” Jeb shouted as they dragged him away. No matter how he struggled, they seemed to be stronger, which made no sense to him, with how small they were. He should be able to bench all of them simultaneously, but somehow they were pinning his hands to his sides.

Must be these shackles, Jeb thought.

“Put him in cell…eh…six.” The sindio said, scratching his head under the nightcap and smothering a yawn. “I gotta do a bunch more paperwork on the hostages. Make some death threats, kill somebody to make a point, that sort of thing.”

Vex waved dismissively as the little berry people hauled Jeb off, toward the fork in the hall that Vresh had disappeared down. Vex himself turned and walked away, vanishing further into the labyrinthine underground complex.

After maybe five minutes of being lugged around like human firewood, with plenty of time to cinsider his own mortality, or what a life as a rab-lat might look like, along with various suicide methods from different cultures…an explosion on Jeb’s right interrupted his morose thoughts, bursting open part of the stone wall to the side.

Jeb and the people carrying him were peppered with shrapnel and catapulted up and against the far wall. Hard. Somehow none of the sharp stone bits managed to penetrate his skin, leaving him whole, and gasping for breath, face-down on the floor.

At least they let go of me, Jeb thought, head ringing like a bell as he levered himself to his feet. The little people were scattered around him, groaning in pain and generally not moving too much. He did a quick scan of his surroundings, and spotted Casey Thompson, waving for him to follow from behind the destroyed wall. She was flanked by several nasty looking metal golems and tons of living office supplies.

Her minions must have busted her out. Seems like as good a direction as any, Jeb thought, taking off towards her at a sprint.

“Where are we going?” Jeb asked, offering his manacles to Casey. The teen stood aside, and her golems wrists began spinning at supersonic speeds, using their fingers like a sawblade. In a matter of seconds, the manacles were simply cut open with a screech of protesting steel. Jeb made sure to stand very still.

The moment the manacles left Jeb’s skin, his strength came flooding back. The invisible barrier between him and the burning sun of Myst inside him fell away, allowing him to siphon Myst again. Back in the saddle, Jeb thought, picking himself off the ground. Peglegs are slow.

“We’re leaving,” Casey said, nodding towards the cells.

“Spring everyone else and scatter like mice?” Jeb asked, guessing Casey’s train of thought. Jeb had plenty of experience with the ‘safety in numbers’ motto. Breaking the other enforcers out of their inprisonment was the good and moral thing to do. It also allowed him to use them as meat-shields on the way out.

That’s what I call a win-win.

Together, Jeb and Casey swept through the cells at highway speeds, stopping in front of the heavily enchanted steel boxes where the enforcers were being held. One by one, they went from box to box, prying the warded steel open from the outside.

The steel seemed to absorb and deflect Myst, but Casey and Jeb’s supernatural strength combined was enough to wrench the metal out of shape, causing the enchantments to fail, which in turn restored the captive’s strength, allowing the prisoner to add their strength to the mix.

Did we just brute force an overly complicated problem? Jeb thought as he and vresh paired off, prying open Kor Tekalis’s cage while Casey and one of the other melas enforcers got another one open. Jeb glanced down at his hands. He didn’t remember ever being able to bend thick steel.

What is my Body at? I should check my status. Maybe I got some Impact for ‘stopping’ the bombs? No, Vresh hasn’t paid me yet.

In a matter of minutes, all of the enforcers were standing at attention.

“Okay, so the good news is, the bomb is out of Vex’s hands, and the world’s not at risk of annihilation. The bad news-“ Jeb paused as the lights in the cell block turned red, and a siren began to fill the air. The sound was harsh, and felt like it crawled up his spine and buried itself inside his amygdala through his ears, like some kind of Star Trek parasite.

“The bad news is he knows we’ve escaped.” Vresh’s father finished for him.

“Yeah, that.”

Jeb consulted his inner map of the dungeon.

“The hole I came through should be about two hundred yards that direction,” Jeb said, pointing. “I doubt he could have completely repaired it by now, but…” Given what he’d seen so far, it wasn’t completely outside the realm of possibility.

Kor pointed.

“Our entrance is about a hundred and fifty yards that direction, but the path is winding and narrow.” The melas reached into his pocket, his expression stony.

“We’ll take Jebediah’s exit. Lead on.” He nodded to Jeb.

“Alrighty then, you guys better keep up.” Jeb said, retracing his steps toward the exit.

Jeb created a branched strand of Myst and walked it in front of them to check for traps as they zoomed through the underground, aiming toward Jeb’s exit.

About twelve seconds into their daring escape, a bolt of brilliant white shot past Jeb and nailed Bruga in the chest. The big wooly enforcer let out a short cry before vanishing into a pile of dust.

Jeb’s hackles went up as they left behind the pile of dust.

Is this thing really doing anything?Jeb thought, walking his telekinetic decoy in front of him.

A few seconds later, he got his answer when another enforcer was scoured from existence.

“What the hell is going on?” Jeb demanded, looking over his shoulder as he flew. There were only six Enforcers behind him now. Jeb was in the lead, and Vresh was right behind him, if anyone would trigger traps, it would be one of those two.

Apparently the dungeon was picking and choosing who to kill.

Or maybe the person in control of it, Jeb thought sourly.

“Keep moving!” Kor bellowed from behind him. “Get out now, think later!”

About twenty seconds later, a beam of light passed over Jeb’s shoulder, and Jeb heard Vresh let out a pained cry.

Heart hammering, Jeb looked, and almost wished he hadn’t. Vresh was screeching to a halt and scrabbling backwards towards her father, even as the melas dissolved into a pile of ash.

“No! Father!”

Jeb put on the brakes, allowing the four remaining enforcers to outpace him. He flew back and grabbed Vresh around the waist before yanking her off the ground, ash spilling from between her fingers.

Jeb wasn’t able to hold onto her for longer than a couple seconds as the melas woman burst into flames, her skin hot enough to scald his.

“Gah!” Jeb dropped her back onto the floor, where she rolled to a stop, her hair lifting itself up inside the rising plume of flame.

She glanced at the remains of her father, and after a momentary struggle, seemed to swallow something. The flames died down as she broke into a sprint, catching up with the others, but Jeb could feel the heat of her passing.

“Which way!?” Feej shouted from ahead of them.

“The door on the left!” Jeb called, pointing as they caught up.

They busted back into the lab, clearing through it in a couple of seconds. Feej took a spiteful shot at the sindio’s machine on the way out, tearing it to shreds with her bare hands. Jeb would’ve added one himself if he weren’t so focused on getting the hell out of there.

When they passed through into the main thoroughfare that Jeb had originally come from, another beam of light blasted one of their team members into ashes.

“That son of a.” Jeb balled his hands into fists. “I think Vex is playing with us.” He pointed up at the perfectly repaired hallway, where only a few hours prior had been a battlefield. Without his near-perfect memory, Jeb wouldn’t have even been able to tell where the original hole had been at all.

“No, that’s not it, a slender Melas enforcer said, shaking his head. “It’s about money and politics.”

“What are you talking about, Glenn?” Vresh demanded, rounding on the other melas.

“Bruga’s family was poor!” Glenn shouted. “There’s no way he could have paid the ransom! Look, Amon and Kline were only second generation nobility! Their families didn’t have the means to pay for them!”

“Feej on the other hand, she’s sole inheritor to an ancient clan! And she’s fine!” Glenn said, pointing at the grumpy keegan woman.

“What about my father!?” Vresh demanded. “My Uncle could easily…” Vresh stopped, her hands tightening into fists as the flames in her hair surged. She bit her lip hard enough to draw blood, which boiled as it left her body, the superheated water escaping into the air.

“He could easily pay a ransom.”

“Would he though?” Glen asked.

“You’re a third son of a minor family,” Feej said, “By your logic, you should already be dead.”

Glenn paled. “I’d like to leave now,” he said, his voice diminished from fear.

Yeah, no shit, Jeb thought as he lined himself under where the hole in the ceiling had been, throwing a spear of telekinetic force at it. The densely packed Myst unraveled, splashing against the

“Even if he repaired the wall, he may not have repaired the hole above it. This could still be the weakest part of the wall. Give it everything you got!” Jeb shouted, shifting from telekinetic force to plain old heat, aiming to melt whatever contraption was unraveling Myst.

In a moment of inspiration, Jeb looped the heat-based Myst string he was creating into the inverted cone of a shaped charge, aiming to focus the effect on a small hole and punch through.

Jeb let out a shout as he detonated the string, deliberately overbalancing the translation reaction and causing it to explode.

Boom!

Jeb blinked away the explosion of light and bared his teeth at the ceiling.

There was a little scorch mark on the ceiling. Mocking him.

Vresh let out a shout and punched upward, her arm disappearing at the shoulder and reappearing near the ceiling. She put a decent sized dent in the ceiling, right at the scorch mark, before her arm fell to the ground, disconnected from the portal.

Vresh stifled a cry, clapping a hand over her shoulder as dark red, boiling blood leaked out between her fingers.

Glenn, the slender Melas, raised both hands toward the ceiling and a concentrated blast of Myst hit the ceiling, pushing the dent a little bit further.

“I’m not gonna die with a damned human,” Feej growled, detatching one of the trophies from her armor and flinging it at the ceiling. For an instant, a copy of Feej lunged forward, swinging with a conjured sword. The copy made a two inch cut in the wall before it vanished.

We’re making progress, Jeb thought, a couple more hits and the wall might start to peel away-

A beam of white light shot down from the ceiling and caught the slender melas in the chest. He managed a gasp of surprise before falling to the floor in a pile of ash.

When Jeb looked back up, the ceiling had repaired itself. Not a single smudge marred the pristine ceiling.

You sadistic bastard, Jeb thought, his chest clenching in pain as his nerves began to dance and tingle. Jeb felt somethingrising up inside of him. It matched his desperation and anger, bringing even more out unbidden, an inexhaustible well of furious power.

“let us out!” He shouted, the Myst boiling up and out. Jeb’s flimsy siphon cracking under the stress as he channeled the Myst. In an instant, Jeb went from pulling a reluctant mule to riding a tiger. And the tiger wasn’t having it.

Myst dense enough to taste poured out of Jeb’s entire body, leaping up toward the ceiling. The wards in the ceiling held for a moment before they melted, and the entire ceiling was jettisoned out, peeled open like an apple meeting a high caliber bullet.

Jeb knelt there, one arm extended, staring dumbfounded up at the window to the night sky above them

What the hell just happened?

As Feej pushed herself back to her feet, Jeb spotted the walls begin to extend feelers out towards each other.

No time.

Jeb bent and picked up Vresh, clamping her wound shut with telekinesis. We have to go. Jeb flew Vresh up through the hole in the sky, Casey and Feej following close behind.

***Kol Rejan, level 60 Courier***

Kol stood behind Vex as the sindio counted bulbs. He was leaning forward and counting the heavy gold coins in units of ten, using his fingers to drag them out of the oversized pile five at a time.

“Twelve hundred and twenty…twelve hundred and thirty…”

Sitting across the pile of gold from Vex was an odd assortment of human housewares and a particularly nervous looking melas wearing faux-luxury clothes.

“Thirteen hundred bulbs, all there.” Vex said, reaching out to shake the melas’s hand. “I look forward to doing business with you the next time your ward gets herself captured.”

“The pleasure is all ours, Mr. Xen Calvex, sir.” The melas said, adjusting his collar and looking distinctly uncomfortable.

“Please, my friends call me Vex. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve -“

Boom!

The entire dungeon shook as yet another explosion rocked their world.

“I think our business is done here. You know the way out.” Vex said, making a gesture with one hand that opened up a magical display in front of him.

The melas looked incrediblyrelieved to hear that, and the man snatched up his coat and bowed three times before scurrying away.

“I’ll be damned,” vex said, looking at the screen. From what Kol could see, Jeb and the ones whose ransoms had been paid were leaping up and out of the dungeon through a massive hole that hadn’t been there previously. “I was not expecting it to do that. How is he even still alive?”

The sindio rotated his finger, and the picture’s time flowed in reverse, showing Jeb reaching out with a single hand before the entire screen went pure white, forcing them to narrow their eyes against the glare.

“What about Jebediah?” Kol asked. “Nobody paid a ransom for him, yet you didn’t kill him.”

“Because I like him.” Vex said, putting his hands behind his head as he summoned the video feed of the ‘escapees’ exiting the underground into the dungeon-torn city. “Ever since the System rose to prominence, nobody takes the path of the wizard anymore. I find it endearing. That, and we’re getting excellent data.”