Chapter 3: Shoot the Messenger (Patreon)

They glided to a halt at the landing pad. Jeb had been expecting a marble runway, but it was more of a marble helipad. Everything in Mestikos was white and shiny. It actually hurt the eyes a little.

Jeb glanced at the twitching men and women holding spears between him them like they were trying to ward off evil.

A helipad makes more sense in retrospect since people who fly don’t necessarily need extra space to speed up or slow down.

Jeb’s elbow was hanging out the side of the window when whoever was in command came by to scope the situation.

“Name and purpose of your visit?” a kitri asked, wielding a pen and notepad with all the grace and poise of a ballet dancer. In short: Pretentious.

“Can I get a Wendy’s double baconator, fries and a root beer?” Jeb asked adopting the same tone he would use when yelling at the speaker system outside a drive-through.

“Human jerky for me.” Borg said. Jeb raised a brow, glancing back at him. Borg shrugged.

“Candy!” Smartass shouted.

“Sweets and jerked human, if you’ve got any on tap.” Jeb added to his order, making a ‘jerk off’ motion with his hand.

The Kitri’s eyes narrowed, his pen bending slightly.

Jeb sighed. He probably shouldn’t make too much fun of the bureaucrat. They had their own ways of making your life hell.

“My name’s Jebediah Trapper, I’m here to get a referral from the Emperor before I… reach a climax.” Okay, I couldn’t help messing with him a little. Jeb’s rule against lying made it a little harder to poke fun at people, but that just made him more creative.

The Kitri’s neck wiggled from…excitement? Jeb wasn’t great at reading Kitri. He had a lot more experience with keegan and melas.

“I’ll relay your information. In the meantime, would you park your flying vehicle in the closest open bay?” he said, pointing to an oversized hangar abutting the helipad.

Jeb glanced into the dark of the shaded area and spotted a couple flying carriages, a harley with bigass chrome eagle wings, which was the most metal thing he’d seen since the System installed. There were flying horses, giant birds, and one that he thought was empty at first turned out to be populated by a flying rug.

If you had feelings, you’d probably be feeling sub-par right about now. Jeb thought, patting his dashboard.

He turned on the car, and idled into an empty bay, parked it and got his dufflebag out of the back, slinging it over his shoulder, while deeply inhaling the scent of flying manure.

Now what?

“It’s illegal to bring an undead into the capital without a permit.” Another kitri with anothernotepad said, pointing at Borg.

“I’m not undead per-se. more of a post-life cyborg.”

“Intelligent undead are even more expressly forbidden.”

“Duuur, Braaains.” Borg said, staggering around and drooling.

The bureaucrat’s eyes narrowed.

How long are we gonna do this?

“Can we get a permit for my obviously not intelligent undead to be in the capital?”

“Of course. We’ll just need you to fill out a U-14-22-O Exclusion paper and fit your undead with a tracking device, and a flight registration for your vehicle.

“Fine.”

“Faeries are also illegal.” He pointed at Smartass kicking her heels on Jeb’s shoulder. “You’ll also need to have your bag and clothes checked for any weapons before you’re allowed to roam the city freely.”

“Oh, come on!”

“You’ll also need to fill out a form for yourself.”

***Much paperwork later***

“I don’t know what soul-sucking feels like, but I imagine it’s hundreds of years of paperwork crammed into an instant.” Jeb said. That bureaucrat must have gotten back at them for the food order.

He was so tired, and this was coming from someone with a superhuman constitution.

“You passed that stupid test with flying colors.” Jeb said, glancing over at Borg as they waded through the sea of colorful aliens. They had run Borg through a battery of tests to see if he was intelligent or not.

“Oh, I just shut off my higher brain functions for that.” Borg shrugged.

“Ooh, ooh, look at that!” Smartass shouted, tugging on his ear, pointing indelicately at a massive man who looked like an anthropomorphic bison. “He’s so fuzzy!”

Jeb had seen one of them during the ill-advised raid on Vex’s lab. Brovis, I think they’re called. This one wasn’t quite as huge, but they were big. The fluffy mane was probably contributing to it, but still…

Jeb spotted a race he’d never seen before. They had elongated heads, shark teeth, shiny, pebbly skin and bright colors. They looked a bit like salamanders.

Then Jeb saw another, and another, his System-upgraded brain swiftly noting the aliens and storing them for categorizing later when he knew more about them.

The capital was a melting pot. The weather was temperate enough for multiple races to come together in such a way that everyone was just a little bit uncomfortable.

It was too cold for Melas and keegan, the desert-dwellers, too warm for brovis, the ones who inhabited the frozen north, too dry for the salamander people who kept licking their eyeballs, and too wet for the Kitri, who he heard snippets of complaints from.

All-in all, everyone disliked living here, but since it was a place where every race couldtolerate, it had become the absolute center of trade and law on Pharos. Unlike Solmnath, humans were so far in the minority that he had only seen three since getting on the street.

Jeb craned his neck to look up at the towering buildings that lined the streets, marble edifices that couldn’t have possibly been achieved without magic.

Honestly waiting for our people to show them how it’s done.

The buildings were tall, but they didn’t compare with a good skyscraper. Actually maybe human skyscrapers aren’t a great idea when they get ripped in half every once in a while by the Stitching.

Come to think of it, somehow the city seemed to be immune to the Stitching. Either that or it rebuilt so quickly that the point was moot. Interesting…

“Borg, can you find us a place to stay?” Jeb asked.

“Aren’t you concerned that I’ll be turned away?” Borg asked.

“I’m expecting it,” Jeb said. “But when you do find a place, it’ll most likely be one where people don’t ask very many questions.”

“That tracks,” Borg said, wading into the crowd and disappearing in a matter of seconds.

Being a rare species and lugging around an undead and a fairy was already drawing a lot of attention. Jeb wanted a place to sleep where people were dedicated to staring at their navels.

Sure it was a good way to get mugged, but it was also a good way to remain undisturbed. And after the hell of paperwork, Jeb was just looking for a place to flop into a shitty mattress and pass out for a couple hours without anyone bothering him for a while.

Plus it would probably be cheaper than a fancy hotel.

“Ooh, ooh, look at that!” Smartass pointed to a lumbering…thing, with pale white fur and blue horns with an almost snakelike body. It was bearing a backpack on its back and had no rider, so Jeb had to assume it was sapient.

“It’s not polite to point at people,” Jeb chided.

“How else am I suppose to point at them?” Smartass demanded. “Ooh, look at that!”

“What do you say we do something fun while we wait for Borg?” Jeb asked, wondering what Pharos had on tap for arcade games or fairgrounds. Sure it might drain money like crazy, but keeping Smartass focused on any one thing was almost impossible.

“That’s..um…why don’t we just wander around?” Smartass said, her face turning red. “I mean, unless you really want to go somewhere private...”

Jeb pinched her cheek.

“OWW!”

“Games. I’m talking about games!”

“How am I supposed to know that!” Smartass shouted, tears in her eyes as she rubbed her cheek. “Playing with a maiden’s heart like that; I hate you!”

Her wings buzzed against his ear for a moment as she took off, sailing into the distant sky…before gradually settling back down to the ground some thirty feet distant, seemingly winded.

“Stupid wings getting stupid small,” she panted as Jeb caught up with her. “How do you humans tolerate it?”

“We don’t have wings when we’re small.”

“Get away from me, I hate you!”

Jeb sighed, reaching into his pocket and pulling out some emergency hard candy, unwrapping the crinkly wrapper right next to where she had buried her face in her hands.

Smartass’s ears twitched, and she peeked out from between her fingers.

“It’s too bad you hate me, because this candy here is coffee flavored. Remember that one time you had a bottle of Starbucks coffee?”

Smartass took her hands away from her face, staring at the little ball of sugar, her mouth hanging open.

He held it out to her.

She hesitated.

Jeb cocked his head to the side. He’d never really seen Smartass hesitate at anything before, especiallynot snatching candy out of his hand.

Then the moment was gone, and the coffee hard candy disappeared into her mouth.

“Your tribute is acceptable! She said around the obstruction in her mouth while climbing back onto his shoulder.

“C’mon, let’s find a game or something. Jeb said as they continued wandering the streets of the capital.

Smartass grabbed his shaggy hair like reigns and took to steering him this way and that in the search for entertainment. They found a human shop that served soup and sandwiches, along with a couple shiesters playing cup games and dice.

Jeb knew they were fixed, but Smartass was totally confident she could beat the system, so Jeb discretely paid the guy a couple silver to let her win. He probably should have let the man crush her hopes, because the best way to cure a gambling addiction was never to experience that first rush of winning.

But after that odd exchange, Jeb would rather have Smartass forget the entire thing.

Because it soundedlike Smartass wasn’t entirely opposed to having sex with Jeb.

And that was just a WHOLE bag of worms that Jeb didn’t want to deal with.

She might be older than him, but the way she acted reminded him of a child, which made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up and caused him to nope right out of there.

He couldn’t help but notice that Smartass was beginning to fill out the front of her homespun shirt, too.

The androgynous, almost insectlike appearance of a fairy was beginning to fade into a more mammalian, human appearance.

Jeb had a theory about what was going on with his familiar:

It seemed like as her Impact increased, she was biologically transitioning between insectoid and mammalian, which was making her go through a sort of puberty while she adjusted to having a wider range of emotions and desires.

She did mention older fairies being mean.

Insects don’t need a lot of emotions, and they don’t really experience regret when one of their own dies. They breed by the thousands and let nature sort it out. They’re simple. Eat breed, do what feels right. it explained why Smartass didn’t particularly care that her entire village had been torched. They’re not psycho, they’re just biologically not capable of caring.

Mammals, especially humans, have a huge range of emotions and experience much greater continuity of thought and emotional investment.

When you only have one baby at a time, you’ve got to be emotionally invested, and plan far into the future.

So while Jeb understood it was a completely alien shift in biology that was causing her to act like a teenager, and she was not actually a teenager…she was still acting like a teen.

And it weirded him out.

Maybe. MAYBElater, once she had a handle on her new body…But right now…he kinda felt like a pedo grooming a victim.

Maybe I should just wear a hat that says ‘you must be this tall to ride’. Jeb thought sourly. Of course Smartass wouldn’t get the joke, so it was pointless.

Smartass was fiercely dominating a toddler kickball game when Borg found them again.

“Yeah, eat that!” Smartass said, performing a sliding tackle into a two-year old’s shins.

Jeb was debating pulling the plug on Smartass’s fun, as the alien mothers were giving him strange looks while Smartass threw up double peace signs and pranced around the bawling child.

Thankfully Borg made the decision for him, tapping Jeb on the shoulder, his particular scent of decay wafting over him.

“I got us a place.” Borg said.

Oh, thank God.

“Smartass, Stop teasing the children, we’ve got a place to stay.”

“I hope you all remember this day!” Smartass said to the assembled drooling children, obviously not listening to him. “The day it was proven once and for all that faeries are superior in every way imagina – Hey! Put me down!”

Jeb stalked onto the playing field and grabbed Smartass, hauling her away from the kickball field under his arm.

******

The ‘hotel’ such as it was, was smack in the center of a slum. The kind of place where the people who wanted to be there were the kind you should be afraid of. Where drug addicts and serial killers bump elbows in the night.

And then there was Jeb.

Not to sound arrogant, but I doubt your common serial killer would be able to make me get off the bed, Jeb thought as he kicked off his shoe and pegleg, face down on the grimy mattress that probably had bedbugs.

Meh.

Body did a pretty good job preventing biting insects from piercing your skin when you got into the thirties.

Jeb let out a tremendous yawn while Borg shut down in the corner of the room, curled into a tight ball. Smartass was pacing back and forth, glancing at the door over and over again, clenching and unclenching her hands. The little fae obviously wanted to get out and expend some more of her limitless energy.

“Don’t you do it,” Jeb said into the sheets. “I really don’t want to chase you down.”

Magical DMV had sucked the life out of him. Or maybe it was the one-day trip hauling a jeep from one side of the continent to the other…

No, it was the DMV.

Jeb had never been this magically…puissant before. He felt like he could bench a castle with his Myst core. The important part now was keeping it under control so he didn’t accidentally squish someone else, or himself, or lose control and slip further down the path towards nuke central: Population Jeb.

Right now he just needed…he just needed a little nap before he went out and tried to haggle with the emperor over a cure...

…

KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK

Jeb’s eyes snapped open as a heavy fist rapped against the door.

“Long was I out?” he grunted, pushing himself up.

“Thirteen minutes, twelve seconds.” Borg responded from the corner of the room.

“Gah,” He pushed himself off the mattress and reached a thread of Myst out, jostling the entire doorframe as he yanked open the door.

“Whaddya want?” Jeb asked the Kitri, who carried a platter in front of him with a…

He frowned as he recognized the Wendy’s packaging. A small stack of double baconators, hard candies, and pale strips of dried meat.

“Your order, Mr. Trapper? With compliments from the emperor. You’ve been added to the docket for Saturday, if that pleases you.”

Jeb could never be sure that Saturday was Saturday, because they were speaking a foreign language that was being translated by the system.

“How many days from now?”

“Three days, in the afternoon. Don’t worry about the details of your attendance. The emperor will Summon you.”

“Tidy.” Jeb said, snatching one of the double baconators off the tray before thinking better of it and just stealing the whole tray.

He smacked Smartass’s grabby fingers away from the human jerky and instead threw it over to Borg, who snatched it out of the air with mechanical precision before chewing on it with the first glimpse of real emotion that Jeb had seen from the zombot.

“The greater the sin, the greater the pleasure,” Borg whispered, shuddering in place.

“…Kay…” Jeb said before turning back to the delivery Kitri and taking a bite of his greasy burger. “Where’d you guys get all this?”

“The human jerky is confiscated contraband. The hard candy from a popular candy store on Main street, and the Wendy’s burger is from one of the imperial chefs, a human whose Myst core allows them to replicate anything they’ve eaten before.”

“Huh, I guess money and power can buy a lot,” Jeb said, handing Smartass a piece of fruit-flavored hard candy.

“Indeed, do you have any other questions or requests before your meeting?”

“Yeah, is there a dress code?”

The Kitri’s beak bobbed down and up as he scanned Jeb’s slightly dusty homespun from head to toe.

“Yes. You’ll be assigned a valet until the engagement. Anything else?”

“The rest of my problems I want to discuss directly with emperor.”

“Very well,” the Kitri said, making a quick bow before loping away, head bobbing in their ungainly walk.

Jeb floated back to the bed, unwrapping the next burger.

Once he had devoured them, he leaned back into the comfortably filthy covers, his eyes drifting closed with a sigh…

KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK

Jeb’s eyes flickered open.

“Time?”

“Eight minutes, on the dot.”

Jeb levitated out of bed and opened the door.

The asshole who’d interrupted his sleep this time was a Melas with fancifully gilt horns, wearing a white and gold with crisp shoulder lines.

“From Ms. Tekalis,” he said holding out a piece of high quality paper folded into an elegant letter.

He snatched the letter out of the melas man’s hand and shut the door in his face, floating back to the bed. Okay, a letter from Vresh I can forgive, Jeb said, fully aware of the burgeoning reasons he was okay with it. He was okay with that too.

Jeb resolved to read it after his nap…

KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK.

“Twenty one minutes, thirteen seconds.” Borg chimed in helpfully.

“Seriously, what the hell?” Jeb opened the door and found a piece of paper stabbed to the door with lettering on it.

-We know why you are in the capital, and we have the capacity to help you with it, should you be amenable to providing aid with certain endeavors. If you wish to live, you can establish contact with us at –

“Boring,” Jeb, said, crumpling it up and tossing it in the corner. “I didn’t live through the internet boom and not learn to recognize spam mail.”

“Yeah!’” Smartass agreed.

“Why are you agreeing?” Jeb asked. “As far as I know, You never touched a computer, let alone the internet.”

Smartass shrugged, her lips pursed.

Jeb went back to sleep.

KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK!

“Twele minut-“

“Does everyone know where I’m staying!?” Jeb demanded, hauling the door open.

Standing in the hall was a woman with green-tinted skin, her hair the color of autumn leaves. A vision of pure perfection.

She was also completely naked.

“Nymph-o-gram for Jebediah Trapper,” She said with a smile.

“Umm..”

The nymph – Jeb assumed – exploited Jeb’s confusion and struck like a snake, leaning forward to place a kiss in the center of his forehead.

Scion, so good to see you getting out of that stuffy little city and seeing the world.

“AGH! Goddamnit!” Jeb said, reeling backwards.

The voice reverberated around inside his skull like broken glass in a balloon, barely containing it.

“Get out of my head!”

This is a pre-recorded message. Please hold your mewlings until the end of the offer.

I hear that you’ve gotten yourself into a bit of trouble, and the gods are trying to extort you into murdering me. For something as simple as removing a tumerous mass of spiritual essence. The nerve.

It would deeply disturb me to see you die, scion, and so I’m extending an offer to you: I’ll remove that cancer inside you for free. Honestly, you’d be doing me a favor.

Don’t answer now. Think on it. We’ve got time.

Jeb slipped and fell to his knees as the pressure inside his head fled, deflating like aforementioned balloon. He panted there, staring at the stained wood floor for a moment as his adrenaline faded.

When he looked back up, the nymph was gone.

The human body makes thousands of potential cancer cells per day. You think a pair of tits and a headache would distract me from the wordplay!?

Of course Jeb had to assume she knew that he knew that ‘cancer’ was a mislead. It paid to assume the ancient queen of the fae was probably smarter than him.

Jeb levered himself to his foot with a groan and hopped over to the bed, his head aching too much to trust himself with myst.

Quite the popular one, aren’t I? Jeb thought, sitting back on the bed. He considered laying back down and trying to sleep again, but he realized that would only encourage the universe to send another messenger to interrupt his sleep.

Instead, he took Vresh’s letter off the pillow and opened it.

-Mr. Trapper.

“Seems a bit formal.”

On behalf of the honorable duchess Vresh Tekalis, You are formally extended an open invitation to visit Ms. Tekalis’s summer retreat outside the capital: Fere Talis.

We look forward to entertaining you.

The whole thing was pretty dry and straightforward, but there was one thing that stood out. And that was the lipstick mark at the bottom of the paper.

“WHY? Is she just trying to mess with my head? Why would you write a letter that dry then put a kiss mark at the end of it!?”

Jeb scratched his head and set the letter back on the pillow, staring at it every now and then. Because she knew the lipstick would probably seal the deal. Shit.

Jeb already knew he wasn’t gonna be able to not bite that bait.

KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK!

“F-“ Jeb slipped on his pegleg and marched to the door, slamming it open in frustration.

“Whatever it is, I don’t-“

The…thing in the doorway was tall. About seven feet, even hunched over as it was, peering in Jeb’s door.

It was vaguely humanoid, but seemed..off in ways, like the joints were placed based on guesswork and poor secondhand knowledge of what made a human body viable. The details of it’s body were unclear, as it was entirely wrapped in cloth, disguising whatever was inside the wrappings.

Jeb immediately flickered up a shield of Myst.

The creature laboriously ducked down and stepped inside the room, passing through Jeb’s Myst barrier with the sensation of water sizzling off a hot stove.

Jebediah.

Trapper.

The voice was a whisper that rattled his teeth and made every nerve in his body want to retreat from the aura of tangible fear that surrounded the thing.

Offer.

The creature reached into the wrappings it was cloaked in, retrieving a scroll made of thin blue leather, holding it out to Jeb. The scroll had its own tangible aura of dread.

Wish.

For.

Destruction.

That was the last straw. The pure wrongness of the creature made every inch of Jeb’s soul recoil violently away from it, his fight or-flight kicked into full overdrive.

Jeb launched a lash of white-hot plasma through the creature’s midsection, cutting it in half and driving it backwards, back into the hall.

Awaiting…

The cloth wrapping around the creature deflated as its flesh turned into black smoke and sank through the floorboards of the hotel.

Response.

It winked out of existence, leaving a pile of rags outside their door.

“Jesus,” Jeb said, staggering backward, away from the blue scroll in the center of the room that seemed to have its own gravity.

“That was weird,” Borg agreed from his place in the corner of the room.

I’m just not gonna open the door next time. I’m gonna ignore any more knocks. Fuck them. I’m getting some sleep.

Jeb laid down, his eyes closed.

For a moment, all was right with the world.

Then a thought occurred to him, snapping his eyes open and wrenching him out of bed.

“Where’s Smartass?”