Chapter 25: Starfish (Patreon)

Vresh sat in her favorite restaurant, taking gasoline shots with a shaking hand. Real gasoline was far less smooth than diesel, but she wasn’t in the mood to enjoy herself.

And it’s over, just like that.

She’d contacted her handler in the capital, who’d informed her that the emperor had reached an agreement with the sindio during the ransom negotiations, and the ancient wizard had agreed not to pursue nuclear proliferation in exchange for small concessions.

Tarruk shit, she thought, taking a swig and wincing as the silky smooth, powerfully painful liquid poured down her throat. She knew better than anyone that the story that everyone was told was always far less neat and comforting.

If anything, she was inclined to believe the wizard simply had no interest in destroying the world, and they had simply fallen prey to a staggering amount of groupthink. Vresh wasn’t particularly concerned with the cover story, that wasn’t what bothered her.

What bothered her was that her father had died for basically nothing.

What bothered her was that someone, at some point, chose not to pay his ransom. She’d done the bare minimum amount of research to confirm that yes, every enforcer who escaped had been paid for. An exorbitant amount of a thousand bulbs.

Glenn was right. May he rest well.

From what she could gather, when her uncle had refused to pay, the emperor invoked his authority to pay her ransom personally, and then confiscated a portion of her family’s property to settle the debt.

She squeezed the glass lightly, shattering it and dousing the contents across the table.

“Apologies,” she muttered in a daze as the waiter swept the soaked tablecloth away and replaced it with a fresh one in a matter of seconds, wordlessly replacing her glass with a steel-reinforced shotglass.

Her strength was going to be difficult to control for a few weeks, between the healer reattaching her arm and inheriting her father’s Vow.

The primary reason why the emperor had chosen to keep her alive rather than her uncle.

She knew why everyone involved had done what they did. Her upbringing as a high noble allowed her to coldly dissect the logic behind every choice.

The wizard ransomed them to prove he was open to negotiation. He killed the rest to prove he was not to be trifled with, saving him trouble in the long run. Her uncle refused to pay because it was the golden opportunity for him to take the reigns of the Tekalis family. The emperor chose to save her instead of her father because…

Vresh slumped forward in her chair, resting the steel shotglass against her pounding forehead. Only a dozen shots in and she already had a headache. Her brain must have been foggy, because for the life of her, she couldn’t figure out why the emperor would pick her over her father.

Her father was stronger, smarter, more experienced, the unquestioned head of the family, able to muster the entire Tekalis Army at a moments notice. A rather significant amount of battle-hardened soldiers, many of whom had their second Class Ability.

Maybe he was too good, a dark part of her mind whispered to her. Perhaps the emperor was simply removing a potential threat.

Shut up you. She whispered back. We’re not going to overlook Uncle.

If he had just paid the godsdamned ransom, we wouldn’t be in this situation! The mind-boggling greed!

Screech!

The steel cup in her hand deformed under her grip.

Now her family was severely fractured, and the emperor’s edict confiscating some of their wealth had left the Tekalis family up in arms, with some of them even openly talking about rebelling, her uncle was eagerly stoking the flames, back in the east.

Best of all, the chaos has the family clutching at their purses like frightened merchants in a dark alley, she thought with a snort. The thought that she’d be able to scrounge up a thousand bulbs to pay Jebediah for his assistance now was laughable.

She swirled the dented shotglass in front of her before knocking back another one.

She was going to have to resign as an enforcer and head back to the east…and deal with her family. Well, the resigning part you’ve already got taken care of. She’d been officially relieved of duty already, after all.

But for tonight, all she wanted to do was get completely hammered. Gasoline was just about the strongest thing the melas had ever discovered to drink and yet, all she got was a tickle of a headache.

Stupid Body. Stupid Vow.

Status.

Vresh Tekalis

Veiled Patrician, level 128

Accolades: Underdog, Precocious, Heir Apparent

Body 112

Myst 63

Nerve 42

Abilities: Sightsense, Commanding Voice, A Mile in Their Shoes

Ah, there it is.

Her Body had gone up a staggering 30 points the moment her father’s vow had passed to her. Additionally, she’d received over ten in Myst, a smattering of points in Nerve.

Tomorrow she would drop all of her knight errant wandering and return to her home, ready to spend the next five hundred years squabbling with entitled cousins, but today…today had been long enough. She was off the clock, to use the human idiom.

Vresh wiped the brimming tears away, feeling the moisture hiss and bubble against her cheek.

The bell on the front door rang softly. Normally it wouldn’t be loud enough to hear over the musicians and the gossip of wealthy patrons, but today most people had other priorities, namely cleaning up the devastated city.

Vresh glanced up and spotted Jebediah Trapper walking through the front door with a hollowed out, vacant expression on his face.

“You look how I feel,” Vresh said as he sat down across from her. “Gasoline?” She raised her dented cup.

“Not my thing.” Jeb said, shaking his head. “You know where I can find Amanda?”

“Ah, the woman who reattached my arm?” She said. “She’s at the mall plaza with a list of people in critical condition longer than the street to get there. Missing limbs, brain damage, organ failure, you name it. People are dropping off her list as fast as she can get to them. It’s a madhouse.”

Jeb took a breath, frowned, and collapsed back in his chair, staring right through her. A thin layer of dust

“I guess I will have a drink.” Jeb muttered.

“I can’t pay you,” Vresh said into the silence.

“Oh. I wasn’t – I…” he seemed to struggle with his thoughts in a way that she’d seen on her father hundreds of times. “I’ll take something from you of equal value.” He finally said, seemingly a little sour at having to say those words.

“But not right now,” Jebediah finished. “I’m not that bad. Not given…the situation.”

“My father’s death?”

“Yeah, that.”

The silence stretched out between them as they both stumbled across all the things that were too painful to put to words.

We wasted our time. That was pointless. Could we have done better? Those people didn’t need to die. When I was young, my father…on and on the topics came to mind and were discarded. Leaving nothing but a gulf of silence between them, until finally Vresh found a thought safe enough to utter.

“Casey went home already. She’s going to visit her daughter. I hear her girl said her first words only a few weeks ago.”

Jebediah frowned, his look of pondering striking a strange chord in her stomach.

“That’s…fast.”

Vresh shrugged. “I wouldn’t know what’s fast for a human.”

She tapped the drink on the table. “I’ll be heading back east tomorrow, too. I won’t be coming back, either. Family business. Some other Enforcer will probably take over the task of keeping an eye on you. Unless you’ve got some reason to head east with me?”

Vresh didn’t know why she said those last words. Was it her broken heart, or the gasoline that made her tongue slip like that? Still having uttered them, her insides were clenching into a fist against her will, and were she not already in a melasian ‘mood’, the bloom of heat rising from her cheeks would have given her away.

“I think it’s unlikely,” Jeb said, allowing her stomach to relax. “I’ve got responsibilities here, after all.”

“I’ll probably visit, though, if you’d like.” he continued, dashing her hopes her little slip had gone unnoticed.

Vresh imagined herself spending day after day among her family, surrounded by political rivals on all sides, with nothing to mark the passage of time but the change of seasons. It sounded like the deepest pit of the underworld.

Then she imagined a visit from the simple, peasant, unassuming, simple, honest Jeb.

“I’d like that,” Vresh whispered into her cup.

***Later***

Jeb sat by Nancy’s bed, his hand clasped tightly over each other.

The little girl’s left side was horrifically swollen, looking like one enormous blood blister. She had damage to the nerves of her left eye, and all but the hair on the back of her head was missing. Her right side was a little bit better, since the heat had been on her left.

I swear to god, next thing I’m going to learn is how to heal. Jeb thought, listening to Nancy’s breathing. There was absolutely nothing stopping him from making the attempt, and if he did, Colt might still be alive, and Nancy…

Thankfully she had been holding her breath so her lungs hadn’t been burned. Jeb had seen men breathe in superheated air before, and it was never a pretty sight.

The little girl’s breathing was steady and strong, in and out like a bellows, making the ice packs all over her body rise and fall. Nancy’s breathing hitched for a moment, causing Jeb’s body to tense, prepared to telekinetically force her to breathe if he had to.

Ari was perched on the headboard, looking torn between sympathy and opportunism. Hopefully having Smartass there would stop her from trying to get out of the ‘seven generations of servitude’ on a technicality.

Smartass had grown bigger again while Jeb wasn’t watching. She was almost a foot and a half tall now, making Ari seem puny by comparison. She watched Nancy with an un-fairylike amount of focus.

“I’m glad you weren’t there.” Jeb said.

“Eh?” Smartass glanced up at him.

“I’m pretty sure if you hadn’t slinked off in this middle of all the action, you would have gotten squished. I forgive you for running and hiding.”

Smartass’s cheeks flushed, her glare deepening.

“You don’t know me!” Smartass exploded. “Maybe I’m not guilty about Nancy getting hurt and don’t feel like I owe everyone some kind of intangible debt. As far as you know, it’s possible that what you just said didn’t make me feel better and hurt at the same time making me unsure of what to do with my feelings! I hate you so much!”

Smartass flew out the door, slamming it behind her.

What…the hell…was that? Jeb thought as he and Ari stared after the errant fairy.

Before Jeb could think too hard about it, the little girl on the bed opened her good eye, likely woken up by the sudden noise.

“Oh, Hi.” Nancy said, her arm lifting.

“Don’t,” Jeb said, holding out a splayed hand in the universal ‘STOP’ motion. “You’ll crack your skin.”

“Oh.” Nancy put her hand down.

“I’ve called in a favor from a friend of mine,” Jeb said apologetically. “But they’re bogged down with the hole that got carved into the city. I don’t know when she’ll get to you, but she will heal you.”

“I’m sorry.” Nancy said.

Jeb scowled. “Sorry for what?” She didn’t have anything to be sorry about.

“Getting held hostage. That’s not what I’m supposed to do. I’m the starfish.”

“There’s nothing you could have done about that…person,” Jeb said, his knuckles whitening as his fingertips dug into the back of his hand. “There were things I could have done, as soon as I knew she was a reaper. I’m the one that bears some of that responsibility, not you.”

“Doesn’t feel like it,” Nancy muttered.

Jeb chuckled sourly. The kid hit the nail on the head, there.

“Something I want you to keep in mind for the future, and this is a very important nugget of grown-up wisdom.” Jeb said, catching the pre-teen’s attention. “When bad people do bad things, it’s usually their fault, not yours.”

“That seems kind of obvious?”

“You’d think, right? It becomes easy to forget sometimes.”

The conversation lulled, the silence stretching out longer than Jeb could tolerate.

“I’m sorry,” Jeb said.

“For what?” Nancy asked.

“About your burns. About Colt.”

“Didn’t you just tell me it was that mean lady’s fault?”

“Doesn’t feel like it though,” Jeb said with a sigh, slouching down to look at his palms. “Damnit, if I could have figured out any other way to get that B-…woman off of you, I would’ve taken it in a heartbeat.”

Jeb felt a touch on his arm and glanced up to see Nancy patting him with her good arm.

“Relax, Jeb. I’m happy.”

“You’re happy? why!?”

“Now that I think about it, I did do my job as the vanguard. I took the hit so someone else didn’t have to. Sure, it hurts a lot, but I don’t scar. Sooner or later, this will all be gone. If she’d taken one of the other kids, they’d be scarred for life. Or dead. I stopped that. With my starfish powers.”

Nancy held up her tiny hand, clenched into a fist.

“Starfish powers,” Jeb said, meeting her fist-bump. “It’s true, you probably saved somebody’s life by being in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

Nancy smiled, her blackened skin cracking. Seeing the girl’s face split like that was more than he could take. Jeb rose to his feet, his heart hammering.

“Well kid, you look like you’re gonna be fine. I’ll get Mrs. Everett to take over for me, and maybe we’ll see if we can get you something you don’t need to chew…what do you think about a peanut butter and jelly sandwich milkshake?

“Ew.”

Jeb gave her a smile, but his heart wasn’t in it. He turned away before she could read his face too closely. “She’ll be right in.” he said, opening the door and stepping out into the hall, closing it quietly behind him.

Life went on in the tilted orphanage. Kids shouting and running past each other in the halls, despite repeated warnings to let Nancy sleep. The entire building now had a slight tilt, since part of it had begun to sink into the weaponized dungeon.

I’ll have to talk to Eddie about that in the morning.

Jeb kept a straight face until he found Colt’s room and threw the door open, stumbling into the only room that he knew was empty.

Jeb locked the door behind him and collapsed to the floor, his heart hammering in his ears as he glanced up at the ceiling.

Nothing. Jeb looked back down at the floor and let out the sobs he’d been keeping under control in front of the children.

Can’t let the protector of the orphanage look weak. So many of these kids thought he was a tireless monument extending some kind of invisible barrier around them. It’s how they slept at night, after so many of them witnessed their parents dying during The Tutorial. They felt safe.

Maybe in the future, kids like Nancy will take that job, but for right now…Jeb thought, wrapping his arms around himself and bawling.

Right now, I’ll keep them out of it. Maybe talk to Mr. Everett about it.

Jeb’s body was wracked with involuntary, gasping sobs that pattered the floor beneath him with salty tears. Jeb must have knelt there for five minutes or so before the sadness began to recede, like it always did. Guilt and sorrow were just another storm to weather. Eventually they blew over, and often left him feeling better for it.

He was about to roll into the balls of his feet and stand up, when something caught in his throat.

Jeb devolved into a coughing fit that seemed to grow worse by the second. At first it was a tickle, but it quickly grew to a full body hacking cough that was determined to dislodge…something.

Something big.

Jeb could feel it in his throat. A wad of something particularly stubborn, blocking his airflow. Jeb’s eyes began to see stars as he quickly ran out of breath.

Finally, the offending object allowed him to get a lung full of air, and he gave a mighty cough, pushing the tangy thing into his mouth before spitting it out onto the floor.

A splatter of partially congealed blood hit the wooden floor of the orphanage.

That’s probably not good, Jeb thought, wiping blood off his lips with his sleeve. Vex had mentioned a ‘fatal flaw’, after all. A moment later, Jeb caught an acrid whiff of something, drawing his attention back down to the floor.

The blood had begun to smoke, sizzling its way into the wood, Alien-style. Jeb’s sleeve started smoking where the blood rested.

“That’s…not good.”

Jeb’s vision was dominated by a System announcement, nearly toppling him onto his ass. He’d been exempt so long he’d nearly forgotten about them.

After reviewing your case the Admin has decided to give you a Quest.

Quest received!

Kill Mab, Queen of the Fae.

Rewards: Removal of one Accolade of User’s choice.

Penalty for failure: User blacklisted

User’s System has been reactivated.

Jeb frowned, staring at the words until they faded. Following a hunch, He said an old command, half expecting it to still be turned off.

“Status.”

Jebediah Trapper

Mystic Trapsmith, Level 39

Accolades: Krusker’s Brawn, Siren’s Cunning, R-R-RubU’s Mysteries, Gresh’s Subtlety, Innovator, Ì̴̸̵̡̢̪̙͔̻̠͋ͥ̓ͥ̒͊̕̕͠ a̸̸̵̡̦̫͕̟̞͓̽͆͒ͣ̒̈́ͣ̐͑̚͜͝m̴̴̸̙͍̟̫̻͖̝͕̟̀͆ͫ́̒ͫ̔̐͝͝ в̴̴̸̡̠̞͙̝͇̻̓͒ⷡ͐̓̀ⷡ̓̓͒e̸̵̵̫̻̪͍̪͚̝͊̾ͤ̔ͤ͋̐͘͝͝c̸̴̴̡̢̞̪̼͙͖͚̫̈́̿ͨ̔̔ͨ͐̿̕̕͝o̸̴̸̪͙͖͚̘̝͚̠̾͛ͦ͊̔̽ͦ̈́̈́͛̚m̵̴̵̞̝͚̫̙̻̘̝͕͒̔ͫ̔͐ͫ͆̈́̕͝ë̸̸̴̡̡̙̘͙͓̠̞̠́͌̽ͤ̓̀ͤ͛̕͝ D̵̵̸͚̠̦͔͉̺͎̼̘́͊ͩ́͋̐ͩ̓̓̔͝è̴̴̵̢̡͇͖̟͔͓͖́ͤ̈́͌ͤ͆͛͛͝͝a̵̴̸͉͖͇̠͙͙͕͔͇͆͒ͣ͐̓͐ͣ́̾̒͝ᴛ̵̴̙̟̺͔̻̼͒̔͋ⷮ̾͘͝h̸̸̸͕͍̻͔̺̀̿ͪ̓͆́ͪ̿̾͑͜͝,̸͍͖̺͐̾̓̓̚ ᴛ̵̸͚̼̟͑ⷮ͊͘͜͝͠h̵̸̸̟͖͔͎͔̝͔͑ͪ̈́͊̽ͪ́͛́͘͜͝è̸̸̴̞̫̟͎̟͓̘͚͓̈́ͤ̓͌͛ͤ͐͘ D̸̸̴̢̡͍͍̺͉͎̦͑͒̽ͩ͌͐̓ͩ͒̔͜e̵̸̵̢̪͉͎͍̫̠͉͌ͤͤ̔̀̒͘̕͝͠s̸͎̫͇̓͑͛͛͝ᴛ̸̸̢̠̻͇͙͎̒͋ⷮ̐̓͒r̸̸̵͙͎͇̠̼̺̦̔̈́̈́ͬ͑̈́ͬ̔͌̐͜͝o̴̴̸̢̦͖̪͉͎̦͐͌ͦ̒̒̀ͦ̀̿͌͘͜y̸̪͇̙̔͝e̴̸̴̡̝͕̠̫̝̟̿̔ͤ̿̒ͤ̽̓͘͜r̸̸̵͖̼̫͓͉̝̫͌̓̽ͬ̽͛̐ͬ̾̈́͆͜ o̴̴̴̝̺̦̺̪̙͑̐̔ͦ̽͐ͦ͊̐̒͠f̴̼͍͖͑̀͘ W̸͔̻̒̿͐͜ö̵̸̸̡̢̠̫͉̺͎͚̪́̓͌ͦ͛ͦ̈́̔͛͝r̴̴̵̢̼̦͍̼͙͙̐ͬ͌̔̈́ͬ͋̽͘͘͝l̵̟̞̘͊͒͒d̴̴̴̡̫̞͔̟̪̟̾͋̀ͩ̐̒́ͩ͆͝͠s̸̝̺̪͑͌̽͛͛

Body 55

Myst 121

Nerve 52

Abilities: Mystic Trigger

“….That’s definitely not good.”