Chapter 9: Railroaded (Patreon)

Queen Mab reclined into her throne in satisfaction, and her courtiers subtly relaxed. If one were to look close enough, they would be able to make out the events that happened in the distance glittering in her left eye. From a distance it was no more than a twinkle of light.

She gave a minute frown, leaning forward, as if someone had given her unwelcome news, and every heart quickened, afraid of their queen’s displeasure.

The ancient fae’s lips parted, and words that bent the fabric of reality slithered out from between them.

“Jebediah Trapper will not fly.”

She continued to frown, her eye fixed on her scion with a level of focus reserved for only the most damned souls and family. Finally, after an interminable moment, she relaxed back into her throne.

But no matter how she relaxed, her eye never lost that twinkle of light.

A moment later she snorted, as if someone had told a mildly amusing joke.

***Jebediah Trapper***

“Fuudge!” Jeb screamed as he was thrown through a rift in the sky, impacting against a verdant forest floor. He raised his head and spat out some grass, dirt, and leaves, a moment before something cracked against his skull.

He covered his head as objects rained down on top of and around him, erecting a shield of telekinetic Myst.

Thump, thump THUMP!

Once the rain of debris ended, Jeb raised his head to check his situation.

He was face to face with Borg.

“Fudge?” The zombot asked from an inch away.

“I’ve been living in an orphanage full of small children, run by a couple of old ladies, what did you think was gonna happen? Not exactly a bunch of sailors,” Jeb muttered, pushing himself up and away, scanning the scene.

The three carts had tumbled into the portal with him, scattering esoteric and likely dangerous objects all over the forest floor, which was less than ideal.

Jeb’s gaze landed on Piwaki. The kitri Valet was hanging by his voluminous silk robes from a massive tree branch. He seemed to have fainted.

Past him was a forest trail covered in soft-looking green moss, creating a winding route that was…ominously inviting.

“Wager a bulb that’s a trap.” Jeb said idly.

“No deal,” A velvety voice said from behind him.

Jeb stiffened and glanced backwards. Vresh was blowing foliage off her arms with a sharp exhale while rebuttoning her shirt.

Jeb whipped his head back around, counting to three Mississippi before turning to face her again. When he turned back, the ex-enforcer, current countess was finished straightening her clothes that had been loosened by the strange blast of…Unbuttoning Myst? Undoing Myst? Unchaining Myst? Unconstraining? Those things were pretty unconstrained…

Jeb refocused, tugging on his connection to Smartass. She felt alive, guilty, and more than a little scared, but alive all the same, which was Jeb’s primary concern.

Jeb couldn’t directly communicate with his familiar across the distance, so he just tried to remain calm. No sense getting angry at her now.

Jeb was going to save all that up for when they were face-to-face again.

“How’d you get in the portal?” Jeb asked Vresh. “Weren’t you up in the stands?”

“I ran to the edge to better see what was going on,” Vresh said, rubbing scuffs off of her shiny black horns, glancing up at a shattered branch with a wince. “Someone pushed me from behind. I assume my uncle, but I don’t know for sure.”

The emperor was nowhere to be seen, despite standing relatively close to Jeb. Likely because either Mab didn’t want anything to do with him, or simply because the man’s security detail was better than Jeb’s.

Jeb’s security detail awkwardly pushed himself to his feet with a single arm, scanning the location with mechanical precision before looking up at the sun overhead.

“Assuming no time lost, we’ve moved twenty-four degrees north, thirty-two degrees west. Mestikos is that way,” Borg said, pointing unerringly out into the forest.

“Of course, if you wish to return to Solmnath to die in peace instead, that’s that way.” He said, pointing about a hundred and fifty degrees the opposite direction.

“Helpful,” Jeb muttered, staring at the sky and mentally calculating weight.

One eighty for me, two hundred for Vresh, two fifty for the robot, ehh, one forty for the kid. Yeah, I definitely got this.

He’d carried a jeep across a continent in a day. Getting back to Mestikos with under a thousand pounds was child’s play.

Jeb looked back down and a beam of reflected light caught his attention. It was the titan heart, throbbing and slowly embedding itself into the earth.

“Nope, nope, nope!” Jeb said, snagging the heart before it could disappear into the earth and wiping the dirt and leaves off of it, latching it awkwardly into the top of his money satchel once it stopped beating.

Whew.

“Anybody got eyes on the blood of the first vampire?” Jeb asked, glancing around.

Piwaki groaned and honked from his upside-down position.

******

Rounding up all the dangerous artifacts was simple, with the exception of the blood of the first vampire, which actively tried to crawl away. But transporting them was a different problem entirely. Each and every one of the most dangerous artifacts had some kind of tamper-protection on them that made them impossible to move with Myst, or even move with something that was itself being moved my Myst.

The defenses must have kicked back on after we fell through the portal.

Every time he tried to move the magical objects via Myst, a burst of Golden Myst would emerge and interfere. In short, there was no way to fly the dangerous artifacts back to Mestikos.

“You can fly yourself back to the city,” Vresh offered. “I’ll watch them.”

Hmm… Jeb didn’t trust Borg or Piwaki to watch the artifacts. He could go back to Mestikos, but all he’d find there was chaos and potentially finger-pointing. Plus he didn’t want to leave three people alone in what was presumably Mab’s territory.

It seemed like…it seemedlike Mab had pulled off a heist, then obfuscated her real target by sucking in so many random artifacts. If he left Vresh alone, here, with the queen of the fae and a bunch of powerful artifacts…

Jeb didn’t want to think about what might happen. Mab seemed to have some small concern for whether or no he lived or died, but he doubted Vresh benefited from the same consideration.

“I think I’ll stay,” Jeb said. “There’s not much in Mestikos for me right now besides an exhaustive investigation. Plus, I already asked the emperor for a reference, and going back immediately doesn’t seem like the best idea.”

“Your zipper’s undone,” Vresh said, shooting Jeb’s trousers a lingering glance.

“So it is,” Jeb muttered, looking down. Gives me an idea. Jeb shrugged, taking the enchanted armor handkerchief out of his pocket and shaking it, picturing his favorite pair of pajamas from before the Stitching.

A riot of delicate Myst surrounded the cloths, and a moment later, a fuzzy pair of pants and a soft, oversized t-shirt shirt with a picture of Sonic the Hedgehogmanifested in front of him, and Jeb quickly got changed into the nightclothes.

“Why are you dressing like that?” Vresh asked. “You look like a fool.”

“I figure I’m probably going to meet my great grandma soon,” Jeb said, feeling breezy in the oversized clothing. “And when you meet someone important, there’s a social expectation that you dress in a way that reflects your respect for them and their station.” Jeb said as he folded his old clothes and set them on the forest floor, placing the blue scroll in his fuzzy polyester pocket.

“I see,” Vresh said with a faint smile.

It was a small token of defiance, but in the fifth dimension, small tokens of defiance were the same as armor. And Fairies lived and breathed that shit.

Once they had cinched Jeb’s pants into a workable backpack and stuffed all the priceless artifacts into it, they got Piwaki down from the tree, and slapped the big bird awake.

“Honk! What is this, what’s going on!?” the valet demanded.

“You’re currently in the death wilds,” Jeb said.

Piwaki’s beak fell open, and he started hyperventilating.

Vresh smacked the bird again.

“Calm down, you’ve got some of the most powerful people in the empire here with you. And whatever that is,” She said, jerking her thumb at Borg, who was frowning thoughtfully as he glanced around.

“Does something feel different about this place?”

“If I had to guess?” Jeb asked as he breathed in the air that felt thick and alive, laden with potent meaning. “I’d say Fate is closer to the surface in the death wilds.”

Jeb hadn’t been able to tell when he’d been in the Impossible Tutorial, because his Myst had been low, his experience limited. But all the shenanigans of the last year had given him a bit of a nose for it, and the Death wilds were steeped in the fifth dimension.

“Try not to say things you don’t mean while we’re here,” Jeb said quietly, his gaze landing on the pristine trail leading them into the distance. “And breathe defiance.”

Jeb pulled out the compass and pictured himself going each cardinal direction. The needle twitched off death hardest when he aimed to the north.

“Let’s go this way,” Jeb said, pointing north, ninety degrees away from the convenient trail.

“But there’s a trail right there,” Piwaki said.

“Yes. It’s a convenient trail at the exact point we were teleported to by an unknown force.”

“That makes it…bad?” Piwaki asked.

Vresh did Jeb a favor and cuffed Piwaki in the back of the head, following Jeb’s lead as he began to hack his way through the underbrush telekinetically, forging his own trail.

“Hey guys, do you think a robot can form a Myst core?” Borg asked from behind them.

“No but an undead can,” Vresh responded. “Although they are in the extreme minority. Usually such creatures are accompanied by a calamity the likes of which are written about in the histories of dead cities.”

“Cool, cool.”

Jeb glanced over his shoulder and saw Borg walking behind them, looking innocent. His eyes narrowed.

“Alright, spill it. What’d you do?”

It’s nothing major,” Borg said, wiggling his stump of an arm. “Just a little self-repair. It’ll take a few days, but I should be able to get my arm back.”

Jeb turned and inspected the stump with his senses as close as he could. The Myst around his Borg’s missing arm flickered like the white noise on an old television, rather than flow like string the way a human might do it.

“What’s your core?”

“-tion,” Borg mumbled.

“What was that?”

“Creation.”

“As in creating something from nothing?” Jeb asked.

“There are several legendary Myst users who were reputed to be able to summon gold and other simple elements from Myst itself.” Vresh whispered, Eyeing Borg askance.

“Creating anythingfrom nothing.” Borg said. “Turns out, your simple, squishy human brains just can’t process that much information at once. All organics seem to share this limitation.” He held up his hand and a stunningly complex formation of Myst swirled around his palm for an instant, coalescing into a ladybug which promptly opened its carapace and flew away.

“Unfortunately, the energy requirements of un-delineated creation are prohibitive,and my natural Myst intake is dictated by my Prism array, so I must make things gradually, piecemeal, or very small.

“Did you just create life?” Piwaki asked, his gaze following the ladybug.

Jeb shrugged it off. Eh.

“Just keep your hardware upgrades within reason.” Jeb could already see why the robot had chosen that particular Myst core. He could create microchips designed by an AI at the atomic level and modify himself at will. It’s not the quantity, it’s the quality.

In addition to neurotoxins, gold bullion, spy cameras, etc.

“You wound me, sirrah,” Borg said, putting his hand to his chest. “I have already sworn myself to your service, and whatever I do must needs be in your best interest…Do you think I would look good with one of those big beefy looking metal arms like Cable has?”

Borg flexed his skinny, withered arm to demonstrate. Jeb could see a little of the robot frame underneath a part where the rotting flesh had receded around Borg’s Prism Array.

Now Jeb couldn’t help but picture the grisly work of Ron and Eddie literally removing a cadaver’s bones and replacing it with metal.

“Actually, some cosmetic improvements would probably help your social interactions a lot,” Jeb admitted, turning forward.

“I was thinking the same thing –“

Jeb’s eyes widened when the shadow leapt out of the woods and tackled him into next week. He was catapulted backwards and to the side, landing him deep in the thick forest undergrowth.

“Fudge!” Jeb shouted as the amorphous creature manifested claws and tried to scratch his eyes out.

“GAH!” Jeb unleashed a blast of Myst, scattering the creature into motes of darkness and making the trees themselves shake as the wave brushed past them.

“Jeb, what’s going on?”

“You didn’t see the thing!?” Jeb asked.

“What thing?” Vresh asked, her voice rising a little in concern.

Jeb scanned the surrounding woods, his heart thumping hard in his chest.

There was a tug on his senses, and Jeb’ glanced to the side, where the motes were beginning to coalesce into the shadow.

It had short legs, long arms with talons that would make Freddy Krueger jealous. A bit like the shadow of a silverback gorilla crossed with aforementioned supervillain.

It also had friends. Jeb’s eyes narrowed as he scanned the woods.

“Hey, are you guys only visible to people with a lot of Myst, or are you just here for me?” Jeb asked, not really expecting an answer.

He didn’t get one.

“Who are you talking to – Oh my goddess!” Piwaki shouted in alarm as Jeb flung out an arm and unleashed a devastating blast of Myst, scattering the monster and sending a shockwave through the forest.

The other shadows creeped a bit closer.

Okay, are they real or an illusion? Jeb thought to himself. He patted his face, finding the scratches still painful and bleeding.

“Hey guys do I have cuts on my face?” Jeb asked.

“You do,” Borg said, nodding. “What’s going on?”

Jeb glanced behind them, toward the convenient path through the woods that they had left behind.

It was completely shadow-free.

Jeb narrowed his eyes. I hate being railroaded.

***Elsewyr***

Queen Mab’s lips twitched as the human left the path they’d been given.

“Ungrateful spawn,” She said, with a modicum of amusement.

“Jebediah Trapper will. Stay.” Her eye twitched. “On. The.”

There was violent movement in the twinkle in her eye, followed by an uncontrolled wave of Myst backlash crashing down around them like a waterfall.

Mab’s eye twitched again, and her nose began to bleed.

She reached up with a silk handkerchief and wiped the drop of blood away before incinerating it. She did not continue speaking immediately.

When she finally spoke again, her courtiers withered before her thunderous expression.

“There’s another player in this game.”

***Jeb***

“Gah!” the shadows leapt at him one after another, trying to knock him around like a ping-pong ball. Every time he blasted one to smithereens, one more would recoalesce, and another would spawn out of nothing.

There were starting to be a lot of them, now.

“Jeb, what do we do!?” Vresh asked, her voice concerned.

Aww, she’s worried about me, that’s – oh god, there’s more!

Jeb turned his Myst into a flame whip and began lashing through the creatures like a trailblazer chopping down underbrush.

That only worked for so long, because they recoalesced faster when they weren’t completely shredded.

One got through his defences and knocked him to the ground, its talons peeling away sections of telekinetic armor as it tried to eviscerate him, and the rest piled on top.

Vresh rushed forward to help Jeb, which seemed to irritate the creature’s dogpiling him, as several slashed at Vresh’s unprotected face.

The countess’s skin was barely scratched, but her body was catapulted backwards, slamming into a tree.

“Don’t help me!” Jeb shouted past the shadow. “We’ll probably survive this! I think they’re just after me!”

“Real comforting!” Vresh said as she sat up, her gaze scanning the forest, passing dozens of shadows without acknowledging them.

During Jeb’s instant of distraction, a claw slipped through his armor and prodded him in the stomach.

“Agh, you Mm..” Jeb bit his lip before he said something untrue in the heat of the moment.

I need to get rid of these things somehow, but nothing seems to work. Jeb just didn’t have the means to destroy them. His fire whip was even less effective than regular telekinesis, and Jeb didn’t have any other ‘spells’ on tap. He needed something way more destructive, both on a physical and spiritual level.

Jeb experienced a flash of inspiration, and he could feel his face twisting into a cruel grin.

Jeb reached into his pocket and dropped the telekinetic barrier around him.

The shadows fell towards him, and Jeb could’ve sworn he saw an expression of surprise on their blank faces the moment before he touched the rolled up blue scroll into the creature’s chest.

Jeb could feel the delight in the scroll as it reached out and touched the essence of the shadow creature, consuming it whole.

The shadow burst into a perfect sculpture made of ash before tilting forward and collapsing on top of Jeb, covering him in unnaturally fine ash.

“Goddess, where did that come from!?” Piwaki asked, flinching away from the sudden appearance of the ash-statue.

“Ahahahahah!” Jeb cackled as he swung the scroll around violently, hitting each and every shadow ape above him with a gentle, loving tap from the scroll of ashing. The enjoyment of wanton destruction was infectious, and Jeb and the scroll seemed to feed off each other.

Jeb climbed out of the pile of ash and eyeballed the remaining shadows.

They were edging away from him.

“Oh, no you don’t,” Jeb growled, holding out his open hand.

The blue leather scroll lifted up off his palm, bouyed by a powerful string of Telekinetic Myst.

It shot out with a crack of displaced air, burrowing a hole through the closest shadow before twisting violently and chasing down each of the creatures, turning every single one of them into a pile of ashes in a matter of seconds.

You have gained a level!

You are now level 40!

“Yeah! Don’t fudge with Jebediah Trapper!” Jeb shouted, although he had to admit it lacked a certain ‘Jeb’ flair without the hard cursing.

Still, he was in a good post ‘near-death’ mood. First level in a year.

“Status.”

Jebediah Trapper

Mystic Trapsmith, Level 40

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 52 +

Myst 130 +

Nerve 52 +

Abilities: Mystic Trigger

1 Ability point remaining.

Jeb poked Body, raising it to fifty-three before dismissing the status screen.

That’ll buy me a little extra time.

“Jeb, are you okay?” Vresh asked, approaching him, her warm hand radiating heat through his body as she placed it on his shoulder, looking into his eyes with concern.

Jeb scoffed, crossing his arms, and putting on his ‘cool guy’ persona.

“Yeah, I’m –“ Jeb’s attempt to play it cool backfired horribly when a tickle in Jeb’s throat drove him to his knees, hacking and coughing violently into the grass, struggling to breathe as he dislodged a massive wad of bloody flesh, which immediately began to smolder on the forest floor.

Once Jeb’s breathing had recovered, he glanced up at Vresh, forcing a sheepish grin.

“I’ve been better,” he admitted.

Error. Recalculating Body. 53 à52

Error. Recalculating Myst 130 à133

Shut up, you.