Chapter 11: Cabin in the Woods (Patreon)

The forest no longer seemed to be angry at them. That was good. Maybe not less angry,Jeb thought, bathing in the vibe of disapproval that he felt pressing in on him from every angle. Like he’d just jumped into a deep pool of angry stares.

More like it had realized that getting rid of them was more effort than it was worth.

After the sun began to go down, Jeb created a tiny filament of plasma and held it above their heads as they walked, reinventing the magical lightbulb.

The trees seemed to grow more ominous as the sun went down, their shadows looming large around them.

Piwaki was taking it the worst.

“It feels like we’ve been walking forever!” Piwaki groaned from the middle of the pack. They had to keep him near the middle of the group because out of the four of them, he was the least capable of defending himself.

He was also the least capable of shutting up.

“Once again,” Jeb said, glancing over his shoulder. “Do not say things without thinking. There’s a good chance that whenever you say those words, you’re making the walk longer.”

“How can that be?” Piwaki asked.

“Because thoughts have power here,” Jeb said, glancing around and checked the compass. They weren’t walking in a straight line, exactly, instead Jeb was heading in the general direction of happiness, which meandered about a bit.

Now it was dead ahead, where the forest parted just enough to make out a clearing in the distance.

Jeb squinted his eyes, barely making out what looked like logs stacked on top of one another, overgrown with moss.

Hmm.

They pushed ahead, and the next time Jeb raised his head, the view was the same.

We’ve been walking for ten minutes or so. It should have gotten closer.

This time Jeb kept walking with his head up, watching the moss-covered logs gradually grow closer. Okay, it seems to be getting closer. He was carefully picking his way through the underbrush when a rope-thin yet sturdy root caught his foot and sent him tumbling to the ground.

When Jeb raised his head, the logs were once again at a distance.

Frowning, Jeb peered behind him. Vresh and Borg were giving him and the distant clearing contemplative looks. Piwaki was oiling his beak and claws with some kind of wax.

“Borg, gimme a bunch of rocks,” Jeb said, holding out his hand.

“Right-o.” Borg squatted down and began digging pebbles out of the loamy soil and tossing them to Jeb.

Jeb flung the pebble forward, watching it carefully as it sailed into the distance. For just a moment, he lost track of it, and that was that, the thing was gone. In its place, the façade of a distant cottage rippled, and Jeb thought he could barely make out figures in the distance.

If his Myst hadn’t been so high, Jeb didn’t think he would’ve seen anything at all.

“Hey!” Piwaki’s cry attracted Jeb’s attention as he rubbed a scuff out of his sleeve, peering behind them. Jeb’s pebble laid on the ground beside the kitri.

“Another one.” Jeb said, judging the previous trajectory.

“Here you go.” Borg said, tossing him another.

Jeb raised his aim and nudged it a bit more to the left, closing his eyes before he flung the rock forward.

The next pebble caught Piwaki in the back of the head.

“Ow!” The kitri rubbed the back of his head, glancing between Jeb’s hands, and behind them. “Was that you?”

“Seems that way,” Jeb said. “My question is…are we in a non-euclidean hot-dog or hamburger?”

It would not be good if they had somehow become entrapped in another complete bubble of twisted space. Although this one does appear to be different than the tutorial.It seemed to be more concerned with preventing them from realizing than the previous one had.

Especially how it waited until he wasn’t looking to mess with space.

That felt more like Fae magic than Pharosian magic. There was a test of wills, a subtle misdirection inherent in the wall. It tried to make you think if you justtried hard enough, you could get past, it, and that hyperfocus would be your undoing.

The bubble made by the gods didn’t care what you thought. It simply was.

Jeb took the third rock from Borg’s hand and tossed it sideways, taking a step to the side to avoid pinging himself with his own rock.

Nothing.

Jeb tried throwing backwards and the other side.

None of them wrapped around and came back to them from the other direction, even his experimental fling with his Myst that broke the sound barrier.

So. We’re in a space taco, Jeb thought, thumbing his chin.

It would probably be more accurate to call it a wall of twisted space surrounding the clearing, but somehow the idea of a space-taco sounded like more fun.

The good news was, they could leave any time they wanted.

The bad news was that his compass blinked off Death and towards happiness pretty darn hard when he thought about going there. And it was going to be difficult to get there.

Alright, I guess the question is, whether it’s worth my time to follow up on this, or simply find a more constructive use of my time.

Just because getting past the barrier of warped space indicated happiness, it didn’t necessarily mean he wasn’t going to die. The needle always swung back to death, after all.

On the other hand, it’s not like I have any other ideas for how to disarm the bomb in my soul.

Jeb was fairly sure he couldn’t gain the proficiency with Myst and the infrastructure he would need to get it out over the course of the next six months. Vex had the infrastructure, but trying to take it from him was hopeless, and the ancient creature was more interested in seeing what happened, than anything Jeb could offer him.

So I guess the question is…why not poke around for the fun of it? Worst case scenario he’d die. He was already on that route, anyway. Best case scenario, he’d find some tidbit he could leverage with Vex, the gods, or Mab to get them to save his life.

And even if neither of the above happened, it would satisfy his curiosity.

Yep. Math checks out.

“We’re camping here tonight,” Jeb said, sitting down as he inspected the distant forest, wondering how he was going to get past the wall without moving.

“Here?” Piwaki asked, sounding absolutely shocked. “Shouldn’t we rent a room at an inn to sleep, or something?”

Vresh raised a brow.

“And where exactlydo you think you’re going to find an inn in the middle of the Deathwilds?” She asked, sitting down and gathering together a handful of tiny sticks. She then plucked a long hair from her head and wound it around a larger one.

“Umm…” Piwaki looked decidedly uncomfortable for a moment, pacing back and forth for a while before gingerly sitting on the ground beside Vresh, making sure to get as much dirt off the forest floor as he could before Jeb watched the bird-man come to the horrified realization that it was dirt all the way down.

Vresh made a little nest of twigs and began spinning the larger stick, grinding her own hair into the bed of kindling. In a matter of seconds, her hair caught fire, and it in turn lit the tiny campfire.

“I coulda done that.” Jeb mused.

“I know. Souvenir?” She asked, pulling her burning hair out of the fire and putting out the flame by pinching her thumb and forefinger down its length before offering it to Jeb.

It was still perfectly fine after being on fire for a good fifteen seconds. Much stronger than a human hair, too.

“I prefer to make memories,” Jeb said, but he didn’t refuse the offer, winding the hair into a loop and pocketing it.

He leaned back against a nearby tree and gazed up at the darkening sky, seeing tiny figures duck behind branches in order to avoid his gaze. When he glanced back down he saw Vresh reclining against another tree, her horns propped up at an awkward angle, her skin dimpled by the flora poking into her from beneath.

The kid’s right. This isn’t comfortable. Jeb had kind of become used to beds after living in a mansion for most of a year. And if he could get everyone some privacy, that would go a long way towards raising morale, Jeb’s included.

“You know, I think you have a point about renting an Inn, Piwaki. Got any money on you?”

“Not on me, no.”

“Then how were you planning on renting a room at your hypothetical inn?” Borg asked.

“My family has credit.” Piwaki shrugged.

Vresh gave a chortle.

Piwaki seemed to lose his temper a bit at the slight.

“Why are we in the middle of the Deathwilds in the first place? And why are we going this way?” he asked, pointing toward the distant clearing they couldn’t reach. “If the creature was right, Mestikos is that way. Why on Pharos would you decide to travel further into the deathwilds, unless you’re all mad?”

“I’m just following him,” Borg said, pointing at Jeb.

“Safety in numbers.” Vresh said with a shrug.

“It seemed like things would be more interesting this direction.” Jeb said simply. Piwaki stared at him for an awkward length of time, his feathers fluffing and unfluffing as he processed that statement.

“…more interesting!?” He demanded. “You are mad!”

“I’m not mad, I’m dying,” Jeb spat. That mollified Piwaki somewhat, quieting the valet back down.

“Technically everyone’s dying.” Borg said. “Some faster than others.”

“Thanks for that.” Jeb rolled his eyes.

“No problem.” Borg snapped his fingers.

“Anyway, I’ve got an idea for how we can get a roof over our heads with…minimal effort.”

“How’s that?”

Jeb reached into his pocket and took out some hard candy.

“Who wants to make a Deal!?” Jeb asked the surrounding fairy audience, holding the candy up into the light of the fire.

*******

“That’s odd,” Jeb said, looking at the expensive hard candies in his hand. “This usually works.” He’d gotten them from a fancy candy shop in the capital. They’d worked on Smartass, after all.

Jeb popped one in his mouth while Piwaki watched him askance.

They tasted pretty good.

“They smell funny,” A tiny fairy chirped from behind a log.

“You smell funny.” Another said from above him.

“Yeah, like metal.” Came another voice

“And death!”

“Smelly!”

“Smelly!

Gradually, the fairies began chanting ‘smell-y, smell-y’ over and over again, tiny voices echoing from everywhere at once as more and more of them picked up the chant.

Okay, obviously the bomb is causing problems with the tastiness of my Impact, and Smartass didn’t notice because she’s already got it. Whatever ‘it’ is.

Hmm… so they don’t want anything from me, huh? Jeb’s gaze wandered across the assembled individuals until his gaze landed on the decorative gold buttons lining the outside of Piwaki’s vest.

Fairies should like shiny stuff almost as much as candy. Jeb didn’t think Piwaki would be happy to part with his buttons, but Jeb and Borg didn’t have gold buttons, and Vresh’s were already strained as it was.

“How about his buttons?” Jeb asked, pointing.

“What?” Piwaki honked, covering the front of his vest with his hands like he’d been caught stepping out of the shower.

“Ooh, shiny! This would be the perfect trophy for my mantle. Yes, for this, I, Humblebrag, will perform a service for you! State your wish!”

“Just you?” Jeb asked the fairy that Piwaki was desperately trying not to swat the creature.

“When you are as good as a dozen other fairies, you must bear the responsibility of a dozen fairies, taking the burden on your shoulders so your lessers can flourish. I alone am enough.”

“Starting to see where you got that name,” Jeb muttered.

One fairy wasn’t enough, he was hoping to find a way to contract them all.

“Get away, you can’t have my buttons!” Piwwaki said, waving in front of him as the fairy easily dodged.

“Even if it means you could sleep in a bed?” Jeb asked. “That’s what we would do if we actually found an inn: barter one of your buttons for a night’s stay.”

Piwaki paused.

“How would you go about doing that? They can’t exactly share the button.”

“Tacit agreement!” Jeb exclaimed, reaching out with his Myst and yoinking one of the button’s off Piwaki’s vest.

Honk!

With an application of telekinetic force applied from both sides of the button, Jeb made a rather large sheet of gold foil.

“Trade that to them for making us some beds and a windbreak,” Jeb said, handing the shiny foil to Piwaki.

“Why can’t you do it!?” Piwaki asked, his claws trembling as the fairies began to crowd around the ephemeral sheet of shiny gold foil like a school of fish.

Jeb shrugged. “It’s not my gold. And if it were, they wouldn’t want it. Apparently I smell bad to fairies now.”

Jeb waved a hand dismissively. “Just try to get a good Deal. It’s not that hard.”

A few minutes later, the sun had well and truly gone down and the four of them were inspecting a scale model replica of an inn by the light of the fire.

I guess I misspoke.

“Why don’t you try hopping in?” Jeb asked, pointing at the tiny building Vresh was holding between her hands.

“Look I know you’re mad,” Piwaki said. “But-“

“I’m not mad,” Jeb said, which was true. He was dying laughing on the inside. “I just want you to check to see if this inn is magical or not.”

It wasn’t, but Piwaki didn’t know that. The kid’s Myst wasn’t particularly developed, being level twenty.

“How do I check?” Piwaki asked.

“Well, if it were magical, you could just walk into it and you would shrink to match the size of the inn. How about you try putting your foot into it?”

Jeb, Vresh and Borg spent the next few minutes watching Piwaki hop around on one foot, trying to stick his other foot into a model house.

“Man, a camera would be nice right about now,” Jeb said, not really expecting anything of it.

“Already got video.” Borg said, tapping his temple.

“Oh. Nice.”

“Are you people making fun of me!?” Piwaki demanded, tossing the

“Yes.” Jeb shrugged. No sense dancing around the point on that one. “You bought a model inn from fairies.”

“I’ll have you know I’m the emperor’s nephew!” Piwaki shouted, his voice beginning to turn shrill and honk-y.

“Clearly you were not the favorite nephew if you were chosen to take a job with a proven danger of disintegration.” Borg said. Accurate, if hurtful.

“Alright,” Jeb said, holding out a hand. “We’ve had our fun with the kid, let’s put an end to this before it sinks to the level of personal attacks.” He glanced back at Piwaki. “Would you mind trying again? And be specific this time.”

Piwaki looked as though he were going to throw a fit for a moment, before thinking better of it.

“Fine,” he said, pulling off one of his buttons.

An hour later, they had a spiderweb and branch roof over their heads that would slough off rain should it come to that, a few privacy curtains, a windbreak, and some decent beds made of moss above tender branches.

It wasn’t the ritz, but it was much better than what they’d had before, and Piwaki looked pretty proud of himself.

Jeb rolled over on his bed and glanced over to the privacy curtain on his right.

Having superhuman senses was both a blessing and a curse.

Vresh was literally so hot he could feel her body heat through the curtain. In fine detail.

The infrared flickered against his skin.

Vresh was waving.

Jeb waved back.

A tiny bloom of heat against his forehead indicated a smile.

“Goodnight,” her voice emanated from behind his left ear.

Not to be outdone, Jeb laid a string of Myst through the ground and threaded it up into her bedposts before connecting the end to his vocal cords, causing the entire bed to rattle to his voice.

“Goodnight.”

“Eep!”

Jeb turned over with a smug smile, satisfied with his victory.

Then he felt something crawling between him and the bed.

“Ack!” Jeb rolled out of bed and onto the ground, his heightened senses picking up Vresh’s barely restrained giggles.

Damn it, I think I might have started something I shouldn’t’ve.

******

The next morning Jeb was sitting crosslegged, glaring at the distant clearing that never seemed to get any closer.

He’d narrowed down the location of the wall of twisted space: About five feet in front of him.

Jeb was contemplating the nature of distance. Is it really just five feet in front of me or is it a field and we’re already in it? What is space, anyway, and how do we mess with it? Especially without twisting time too?

Jeb again resolved to knuckle down and do some studying in the adventuring off-season.

The biggest problem was this: Because of the nature of the twisted space, Jeb couldn’t perceive or interact with the Myst that was keeping it going, because Jeb couldn’t reach it by any means. It was projecting twisted space, which prevented anything from reaching it through normal means.

Jeb’s Myst still had to operate in three-dimensional space, which meant when he tried to probe through the barrier, it wound up behind him.

Jeb’s appraisal ring didn’t help much either. The barrier seemed to be more solid in the first four dimensions, and try as he might, he couldn’t use his ring to pick the lock.

Jeb sat there for a while, gradually getting more frustrated, when he spotted Vresh practicing her style of swordfighting againt Borg, who seemed to be fine being used as a dummy.

His brows rose when he saw the Melas woman reach through portals and lay mortal blow after mortal blow on the undead machine. Through portals.

Jeb thought about last night’s prank battle. He’d never actually seen her Myst threads.

Did Vresh’s Myst bypass space?

Jeb put his foot back on and got back on it, wiggling into his favorite groove before heading over to where Vresh was practicing, a thin sheen of sweat on her crimson skin.

“Don’t practice with Borg,” Jeb said as he approached. “He might seem like he’s slow, but he’s actually developing tactics specifically designed to kill you.”

“I do that for everyone.” Borg said, looking offended.

“Even me?” Piwaki asked.

“No, you wouldn’t need a specific tactic. You’re in the civilians, small children and animals designation.”

“Hey!” Piwaki honked. “I demand you devote more effort to figuring out how to kill me!”

Borg raised an eyebrow.

“Yeah…I heard it as soon as I said it.” Piwaki admitted.

Jeb hesitated a moment before he patted Vresh on the shoulder.

“Can we talk strategy for a moment?” He asked.

Vresh glanced away from where she was watching the two jokers with an amused smirk, met his gaze, then nodded.

“Sure.”

Vresh and Jeb walked a short distance away, and Jeb motioned to ‘the wall’.

“We’ve got a wall of twisted space about ten feet in front of us,” Jeb said, pointing out towards the clearing. “If my guess is right, the Myst holding it together is on the other side of the special distortion.”

“You want me to reach past the point in space that’s folded and strike the Myst framework from the inside.” Vresh said, nodding in understanding.

“Exactly,” Jeb nodded.

Vresh squared her feet, then slowly raised her wooden practice sword, lowering it into a mirage. A moment later her wood practice sword dipped through the barrier, seemingly vanishing on the other side of the twisted space.

Then it fell, cut off at the midpoint.

“I don’t have a weapon that can actually interact with Myst,” Vresh admitted. “I can’t interact with things normally with my Myst like you do, either, I can only make portals, rather than thread like you can.”

“How big are your portals?” Jeb asked.

“Not big enough for a person,” She answered quickly. “Even after my father…Even after I inherited his power, I’m not strong enough to make freestanding portals, and must be in contact with them for them to work. I can’t move much more than my hands.”

An idea was starting to form.

“You can take small things with your hands when you move them, don’t you? Like your sword and armor? How about I reach my Myst through your portal alongside your hand and poke the barrier from the inside?”

Vresh pondered that for a moment. “I’m not sure how my portals would react to foreign Myst travelling through it. I could lose a hand.”

“What if I stuck my hand through, too?” Jeb asked. “There’s enough room for that, right? At the very least, we could both lose a hand.

“Ah, Fah Bra gosh,” She said with a shrug. “I can always just reattach it. Let’s give it a shot.”

After a bit of finagling, they found that the most effective way for Jeb to slip his hand through the small portal was for Jeb to be the little spoon.

He stood directly in front of Vresh, pressed back against the large melas woman as he ignored everything but her hand to the best of his abilities.

Vresh took a deep breath, raised her hand before slowly bringing it down, her intense focus reminding him of a kata.

From his vantage point wedged into the space directly in front of her, Jeb could see the mirage-like curtain about the size of a bowling ball open up in front of her. It showed the forest from the opposite vantage point, along with a wall of complex knots of golden Myst.

The knotted wall of Myst throbbed and writhed, looking like living celtic artwork.

Jeb took a deep breath, said goodbye to his hand, and reached through the shimmering mirage.

So far so good,

He channeled a sharp thread of Myst through the tip of his finger and probed the knotted Myst for a moment, carefully cataloguing everything he experienced for future study before he violently slashed apart the spell.

Pop!

There was a gust of somewhat stale air as the bubble of twisted space popped, allowing Jeb to see the clearing in the distance. He could even make out his hand beside Vresh’s crimson one, and his bemused face, against the melas woman’s buttoned backdrop.

Jeb carefully pulled his hand out of the portal, then she did the same, allowing the portal to close.

“We did it,” Jeb said, inspecting the clearing. It was much closer than they had thought. The twisted space made it seem nearly out of sight, but that had just been the effect of the looped space. The reason they hadn’t seen themselves was likely some kind of fae illusion magic to keep people from figuring out the trick.

“That we did,” Vresh said taking a deep breath, which rocked him forward and reminded Jeb to move somewhere more appropriate.

The moss-covered logs he’d seen earlier were actually the wall of a log cabin, covered in dense growth doing its best to rot the walls until they lost their integrity and rejoined the forest.

Jeb cocked his head as he heard something…like muttering?

It was coming from inside the cabin.

“Borg.”

“Yeah?”

“You go first.”

The undead cyborg frowned at him. “You know If I truly cared about my own survival, this is where I would tell you to eat shit.”

Borg shrugged.

“But I don’t, so…”

He bravely headed into the clearing, walking through the overgrown grass, kicking what looked like a wooden rake out of the way as he made a beeline for the door.

As they got closer, the muttering became more and more distinct. It was old, and raspy.

“It was an honor, now it’s a curse,” The voice spoke. “That whore knew this would happen. Can’t run when the monster’s already inside you. Nowhere to go from there, is there?”

A raspy chuckle.

Borg stepped into the doorway of the small cabin.

“Good afternoon,” Borg said to whatever was inside.

Jeb positioned himself closer to see.

There was a man inside, stooped over at a table, an empty bowl lined with fungus directly in front of him.

He had pointed ears and sharp cheekbones, but those were the least memorable apsects of the man’s appearance.

His moldering clothes barely contained the throbbing growths that covered the majority of his body. They looked almost cancerous, but they weren’t red and inflamed, but instead bore the color and awful odor of gangrene.

The fae was sick. This much was obvious.

“Afternoon?” the man chuckled to himself, still staring at the empty bowl in front of himself. “What a poor joke, my Queen. It’s always afternoon in this prison.”

The man twitched like he’d been poked, the slowly lifted his gaze to look at Borg. His eyes widened with alarm and a hint of fear.

“An undead? What are you doing in here? How did you get in? Are you going to try and eat me, abomination? I wouldn’t recommend it.”

A moment later his gaze slipped past the undead and landed on Jeb.

The fear of Borg was nothing compared to the reaction he gave when he spotted Jeb.

“No!” he shouted, leaping to his feet with more animation than Jeb thought he should be able to muster. His eyes bulged, rolling in his skull as he hyperventilated running to the back of the cabin and trying to scratch his way through the wall.

“You’re not supposed to be here!” He shrieked, scratching desperately at the wall. “You’ve invaded this place with your stench! You’ve invaded my very bones! Leave me be, I can’t go any further! NO!”

The fae collapsed to his knees, his back convulsing violently as he gagged, spitting out a trail of green-grey slime.

“No, no, no, my queen, please, I can beat it. I can –“

The man’s speech was interrupted by a sudden shudder, like someon had picked up the strigns of the marionette.

A moment later the man jerked violently, and Jeb saw golden chains pull something something bright from his back before for a moment before the man drew it back in with a desperate gasp, the tumerous masses pulsing in tim with his efforts.

“Let me keep it, my queen, I can beat it..”

“AIIIII!”

A hideous shriek echoed through the clearing as the bright ephemeral thing was drawn further out of his back. Jeb watched in horror as the man’s limbs seemed to be sucked inward like hollow meat-sleeves.

It receded, then it came again, and Jeb was able to make out the shape of the glowing apparition. It was the man. or, a glowing, see-through version of him.

His soul?

The man groaned and collapsed, more and more of the apparition being tugged out of his body by chains of gold Myst.

Every time it pulled the apparition out a little further, and every time, the tumorous masses throbbed a little more energetically. His limbs sucked in like empty tubes before billowing back out, growing in size each time.

Again, the chains pulled.

Again, the tumors grew.

Again, the creature wailed.

Again, the voice deepened.

Again. And again.

Is he…getting bigger? Jeb thought, eyes narrowed.

“Borg, I think you’re gonna want to take a step back. I think we’re all gonna want to take a step back.”

“Yep, yep, yep.” Borg said, hustling out of the cabin. Piwaki was already near the edge of the clearing, and Vresh matched Jeb’s distance, stepping back with him.

Together they got their distance as the sounds of pain echoed from inside the cabin.

Happiness, my ass, Jeb thought sourly.

There was a final, guttural wail, and a tearing sensation that rippled outward through Jeb’s stomach, and a moment later, an ephemeral fae wrapped in golden chains whipped through the roof of the cabin and into the sky.

A moment later, the cabin exploded outwards, sending rotted wood sprinkling down around them as the abomination emerged from its chrysalis.

It was easily fifteen feet tall and ten feet wide. A pool of gangrenous flesh dotted with writhing limbs. a pair of eyes that seemed too small for the creature’s size, small and beady by comparison, opened where the man’s face used to be.

It looked down at them, and it hungered.