Chapter 21: Mind control sucks (Patreon)

Jeb and his party took it in.

The moment they’d been waiting for. Two decades of brutal conflict, ever since the alien invasion had begun, starting with Not-Roslyn, people all across the planet had been attacked by murderous shapeshifting creatures hiding among them, plunging the world instantly into a violent apocalypse.

Finally it came to this.

The end.

The obscene crystal that the creatures had been feeding the blood of millions of innocents, a ephemeral body drifting inside it, vaguely humanoid, yet over ten feet tall, forcing them to crane their necks to see it.

The source of their power.

The Time Crystal.

Jeb scanned the surroundings for an ambush, but it seemed as though the guards in the chamber before them had been the last Roz defending the crystal in their oil-slicked capital of ebony and bone.

Jeb didn’t take his eyes off the surroundings, but he took a moment to squeeze his son’s shoulder, a reaffirming gesture.

Today they were going to set things right.

Today they were going back in time.

Amanda glanced over at Jeb, a faint smile on her lips before she and Trevor closed the chamber off. Trevor used a handful of railroad spikes and a Warhammer to block the entrance.

They could already hear their pursuit closing.

“Time Crystal!” their fearless leader shouted, raising his enchanted blade in a dramatic pose. Jeb resisted the urge to roll his eyes. There was a certain amount of grandstanding to be expected with Rory.

“We have defeated all your guardians,” Rory spoke, leveling the blade towards the crystal. “Surmounted all your tests, now we demand you grant our wish!”

“Speak.” The crystal vibrated, the humanoid gigantic figure inside twitching like a dreamer.

“Grant our heart’s desire,” Rory spoke. “Turn back the clock, undo the invasion of our reality by those we call The Roz.”

If Roslyn were alive, she probably wouldn’t appreciate vicious multidimensional parasites being named after her. Oh well.

“I cannot grant this wish. The Roz are not real.” The time crystal spoke, the dreamer inside twitching.

“Umm…Of course they are,” Rory said. “That’s just what we call them. The evil creatures from another dimension that invaded earth…made you?”

“I am not real.”

“Buh….” Rory deflated, his sword drooping in his hand.

“The Roz as you call them, made the reality you currently reside in by trapping me inside this crystal. To erase them, you must wake me up. If I wake up, all of you will cease to exist.”

“What are we then?” Trevor demanded. “Chopped liver?”

“Figments of imagination…all but one of you.”

Jeb frowned.

“One of you has my Identity and will awaken to our reality. The rest will be scattered to the wind and forgotten as dreams. Alas, I cannot tell who it is. I have no eyes, and my Identity is concealed from me, but I can feel…you are close.”

Jeb’s brows climbed his scalp. That was...weird.

“He’s gotta be lying.” Trevor said, the former weightlifter hefting the warhammer menacingly. “I say if he’s not gonna cooperate, we smash the crystal.

“Smashing stuff is always your answer to everything.” Rory said before turning back to the time crystal and brandishing his sword again. “Hey, Time Crystal. You’re supposed to grant wishes and do time stuff! Do the time stuff!”

“Time Crystal is a misnomer.”

Turns out the time crystal is a pedant, Jeb thought, actually rolling his eyes this time.

“Jeb,” Amanda said, glancing at Zeke.

Jeb followed her line of sight to the uncomprehending kid, then met her gaze.

He understood exactly what her expression meant.

If the Time Crystal was right, and only one of the people here was real, then there was no way Zeke was real. No matter what, one of the two of his parents had to be a figment of someone else’s imagination.

Jeb’s guts twisted violently at the implications

Maybe we’re both not real? What would that mean? If the dreamer awakened, their world would just…cease to exist? How was that any better than Roz’s eating everyone? Was there any way to prolong their reality? Long enough for Zeke to grow up?

“I still say smash.” Trevor said.

“Hold on,” Jeb said, putting his hand in front of Trevor. “We don’t know what that would do.” He glanced up at the giant humanoid figure. “What would that do?”

Boom!A massive thump rumbled against the oil-slick ebony doors wedged shut behind them.

“Destroying the crystal will destroy my higher consciousness. Your reality will persist for a time, but it will ultimately perish with me. Whether that would be days, years or centuries, I cannot say.”

“Okay, don’t wanna destroy the world, got it,” Jeb said, gently pushing Trevor back.

Trevor gave the crystal a glance that spoke volumes.

“I’m not really liking our options here.” Rory said, rubbing his chin. “Kind of a damned if you do, damned if you don’t. What happens if we just leave you be?”

“Then this world will die when I do. ‘The Roz,’ as you call it, is a symptom of a battle between me and another in a higher plane of reality. If I remained trapped here, I will die in that reality, and therefore you will too. There is no happy ending for you here. You must touch the crystal and awaken.”

“I can’t just let you kill my…” Jeb glanced at Zeke, choking back the words. His kid was starting to get a little worried as the existential dread dawned on him.

“Am I –“

“It’s fine,” Amanda said, grasping Zeke by the shoulders. “Your dad’s the strongest mage in the world. He’s gonna figure something out.”

She met Jeb’s gaze, fifteen years of memories passing between them in the blink of an eye.

BOOM!

The door jostled in place, and Jeb could see the railroad spikes give a little.

They didn’t have all day.

“We can’t do nothing. There’s got to be a thousand Roz behind that door. We’re not getting back out that way.” Jeb said, scanning the surroundings for any sign of a way out.

“Indeed,” Rory said, scanning the room. “Maybe we can rig up some kind of blast to clear the way out…Trevor STOP!” Rory hooked an arm around Trevor’s neck, barely preventing him from smashing the crystal.

“I don’t believe a word this thing says!” Trevor shouted as Rory and Jeb hauled Trevor backwards.

“Goddamnit Trevor, there are some damn good reasons not to break that thing, and I’ve got…”

Jeb hesitated. More reasons than anyone else. Why do I have more reasons than everyone else? Who brings their whole family on a suicide mission?

Amanda’s expression crumbled.

“Jeb, don’t,” Amanda begged. “please.”

He remembered meeting her fifteen years ago in an abandoned fedex truck. He remembered all the years in between, a blur of combat, romance, fighting for survival, punctuated with the occasional moments of joy.

A blur.

He glanced at Trevor and Rory.

The two of them had more reasons to hate the Roz than anyone alive. They’d lost everything to them. They wouldn’t hesitate to sacrifice themselves and everyone else to spit in the eye of whatever god had made this wretched world of suffering.

Wouldn’t they?

So why was Trevor set on destroying the crystal, and Rory set on escape?

The crystal had said leaving it alone was tantamount to killing it, as was breaking the crystal. They were both angling for the same goal under different guises.

Jeb’s hair rose on his neck.

His heart slammed.

His companions were attachments, meant to stop him from waking up.

He was the real one.

What if you’re wrong!? His rational mind screamed at him.

Don’t you want to see your son grow up!?

What about your wife? What about everything you owe her!?

At the thought of Amanda, Jeb made his decision.

He would stay with her and see his days through, however long this world had left in it. He’d rather die with her than live without her as some weird higher dimensional being.

Jeb made to step away from the crystal, but something stopped him.

A nagging sensation that he could be – should be – doing more.

That’s not your best effort.

A web of Jeb’s own magic seemed to unfurl from inside him and take direct control of his limbs, causing Jeb’s foot to slide against the floor, stepping towards the crystal.

His body trembled as he tried to bring it back under his control, gritting his teeth with effort. It was magnetic, it was inevitable, like gravity. He was falling toward the crystal. A black hole.

The story only had one way of ending.

“Jeb what are you doing!?” Rory asked, alarm coloring his voice.

Trevor didn’t say anything, he simply charged, raising his war hammer and releasing an epic bellow as he jumped.

A burst of Jeb’s Myst slapped him out of the air like a gnat.

The figure in the crystal twitched more actively as Jeb grew closer to it.

No, no, no, no, no!

“Jeb, stop right there.”

Jeb glanced over his shoulder at Rory, who had raised his weapon to Zeke’s neck, a look of fierce determination across his face.

Jeb turned around and raised his palm, the figure in the crystal mimicking his movements, its form flickering an unsteady in the crystal.

“Dad, what’s going on?” Zeke said, tears rolling down his cheeks.

“I’m sorry,” Jeb said, his throat tightening against his will before he could say any more.

“Alpha Strike.” Jeb’s voice spoke against his will, sending a wave of telekinetic blades crashed across Rory and Zeke, carving a hole through his soul.

“Just do it, then,” Amanda said from where she had collapsed on the floor, her expression vacant.

Jeb wanted to respond, but he couldn’t find the words.

The pain in his heart was so great he couldn’t breathe.

Scratch that, I just can’t breathe.

Somethingwas stopping air from reaching his lungs as his body was marionetted forward. He tried to breath in, but his lungs simply couldn’t move the air.

Why? Jeb thought as tears streamed down his cheeks as his ‘best effort’ wrenched away the only family he’d ever known. I want to stay with them!

Jeb’s vision gradually grew spotty as he ran out of oxygen.

I want to stay with them!

Jeb’s body took one last trembling step towards the crystal and put his hands against it.

***Jebediah Trapper****

Jeb opened his eyes, but he couldn’t see a thing. Solid stone pressed in against him from every direction.

He was surrounded so completely by stone he might as well have been encased in cement. His arms and legs couldn’t even twitch.

Wait, no. my right hand can move a little.

Jeb felt a little bit of air on his palm. There was fresh air somewhere.he couldn’t be buried too deep.

Jeb spun the Myst inside him, concentrating it to the best of his ability, then burst it outward, violently throwing the solid stone away.

There was a deafening explosion and Jeb found himself floating in the center of a crater dug into the foundation of a ruined mansion.

Jeb heaved in a deep breath, his vision recovering from near-asphyxiation, his mind catching up with the series of events.

A fragment of guilt about Amanda wormed its way through the back of his head and Jeb crushed it like a cockroach. It was a parasite implanted by another.

“Dick move,” Jeb muttered, looking down at the three kitri hags pulling themselves out of the wreckage.

Their eyes widened.

***Piwaki, level 26 Mystic Cosmetic Healer***

In the distance, they witnessed Jebediah’s drab clothes rise above the ruins of the mansion before blades of white-hot fire began to shower down on the mansion like shooting stars.

“He seems pissed,” Vresh said, head cocked.

“I can feel it from here,” Piwaki said, covering his eyes against the heat.

His hot-weather friends didn’t seem to mind as much.

“Well, in we go,” Vresh said, pointing toward where the ruins of the mansion were beginning to turn fluid, winding up and striking toward Jeb’s position in the air like a snake.

“In there?” Jeresh asked, pointing toward the chaotic mess quizzically.

“Oh, no, just keep the fringes clear of undead so we can focus on the main problem.” Vresh said. “This is where the adults step in.”

“Awww man,” Kolusk sulked.

“We’re happy to clear the fringes, right, Jeresh?” Piwaki said.

Jeresh hesitated for a moment before a scattering of screeching black fractals emerged from Jeb and soared towards his unseen opponents, perforating the environment in the process. She nodded, and the two of them each took one of the keegan’s shoulders and steered him away from the conflict.

***Jeb***

Dick move.

It wasn’t technically a lie, as the statement was missing a subject. And anyone would agree that forcing you to kill your family to leave a mind-prison was a dick move.

Honestly, Jeb had lost that battle of wills.

He’d straight up given up and resolved himself to die with a honey-pot figment of some undead bitch’s imagination. He’d been saved by his Deal with the Emperor, but it’d felt like getting his soul raked over hot coals, and not an experience he cared to repeat.

If there was one thing that took a little bit of the sting out of being forced to experience killing his own family, it was the way the responsible party’s eyes widened as they looked up at him.

They thought he was some kind of unassailable bastion of iron will, and not a lucky son of a bitch.

Jeb wasn’t going to disabuse them of that. He may have also been a bit angry.

Let’s start with some light napalm.

Jeb compressed dozens of white-hot plasma Myst bars and dropped them down on the assembled undead, his head throbbing as he created the Myst loops to interfere and bump his kinetic energy down two levels to chemical energy.

Thick oil formed from nothing, dunking the entire mansion in goop, which then lit on fire, turning the mansion into a pyre.

A flaming wreck, which collapsed with a satisfying..

Ah crap.

The mansion collapsed, but not because it was on fire, but because it had turned liquid, fire and all, flowing like a river into the shape of a massive, fiery snake, coiling up to meet him.

Jeb pulled up, but he could tell he wasn’t fast enough to beat the ceiling that was forming above him.

Why bother?

Jeb’s eyes narrowed as he wound up another set of plasma, but this time messing with the Myst’s relationship to Jeb. He was starting to get the hang of it.

This particular relationship was named Hector, a cold-blooded hit-man with a tragic backstory that Jeb had hired to dispose of the thirteen targets of his Deal.

What emerged at the end of Jeb’s Myst string was not plasma, to say the least.

Applying Hector to the spell turned the plasma into strange, two-dimensional fractals of pure darkness that radiated cold and zoomed towards the three targets on the ground of their own accord.

Two of the kitri women seemed able to dodge or destroy the spells, countering them with targeted bursts of Myst, but the one missing a quarter of her skull failed to stop one of Jeb’s Hectors, receiving a snowflake of pure black to the shoulder blade, which proceeded to freeze her arm and torso solid.

Above Jeb’s head, the coiling serpent created a new ceiling, locking them all inside an oversized flaming dome.

Flaming spikes of stone and wood resolidified and jabbed towards Jeb like ice crystals under a high-speed camera, bouncing off his telekinetic armor

Jeb picked out the one who was in control of the environment, following the strings of Myst back to their owner, the middle Kitri and seemingly the leader of the three.

Jeb rushed forward and assaulted the undead with a score of whips of pure heat, not having the leeway to modify them.

The last undead warded off his attacks while the leader stopped attacking him with spikes. With a gesture, the frozen undead was shoved toward her by the floor itself, landing in the leader’s palm.

Damnit, Jeb clenched his jaw and tried to get past the feathered menace in front of him, but she was able to trade blow for blow with Jeb’s telekinesis. What she couldn’t absorb, she redirected away from her teammates with a blueish short blade that seemed to deflect Myst itself.

Faradan blade?Jeb thought as he whipped an arm back to avoid losing a chunk of his wrist.

The blade didn’t cut through his Myst armor so much as it warped it, allowing for flesh wounds under the right circumstances.

Flesh wounds might not kill him immediately, but they would slow him down, which was about the same thing.

Jeb whipped the blue scroll out of his pocket and blocked the feathered undead’s next attack, banking on the object’s heretofore invulnerability.

Clang! Jeb was forced to reinforce his wrist with Telekinesis to withstand the blow, but the scroll was unharmed.

The undead kitri damsel’s brows furrowed as she drew back a heavily chipped blade. Jeb lunged forward to touch her with the scroll.

I mean, if you’ve got a ‘solve problem’ button, you might as well use it.

The Kitri used her superior strength to interpose the chipped blade between her and the scroll, pushing herself backwards as the blade degraded further.

Snap!

The kitri’s blade broke, and for a fraction of a second, Jeb thought he’d gotten rid of one of his problems. When the dust settled, Jeb realized that she’d been yanked backwards by a cord of softened stone.

All of a sudden Jeb was facing all three of them again.

The beat-up damsel was missing an arm now, but the other two still looked like they were in mint condition.

Well, shit.

Jeb reflexively created a thick wall of telekinetic Myst between himself and them as they surged forward.

Armless shot some kind of peach-colored Myst at him, and Jeb dove to the side, but it wasn’t meant for him. It punctured a hole in his wall that the third one dove through while their leader assaulted Jeb from behind with the environment itself.

I need to finish one of them off, Jeb thought, forced onto his back foot, wasting Myst on snapping off the spikes behind him as the two undead damsels tried to murder him.

The natural target was the severely damaged one. It wouldn’t have been too hard to take her out of the picture if her buddies weren’t covering for her so damn well.

Still, Jeb thought, watching their eyes widen as Jeb flexed his Myst core a little bit harder to create another circle of plasma. This shouldn’t take too lo-

Jeb’s thoughts were cut off by tickling in his throat.

No, not now-

Jeb began coughing, desperately trying to maintain his footing and his focus as irradiated coagulating blood erupted from his mouth, trying to drive him to his knees.

With every cough, Jeb’s Myst constructs wobbled like a funhouse mirror and brightened in fits and starts, reminding Jeb of an incandescent bulb during a power surge.

Jeb reeled backwards, watching the undead kitri seize on his weakness through watering eyes.

Damnit!

Jeb drew in a ragged breath as he stumbled back, choking on the obstruction in his throat as he attempted to launched a shotgun volley of shrapnel forward to slow them down.

The frontmost undead ducked under it and brought her blade down towards Jeb’s neck as he doubled over, hacking into the flaming wreckage.

Jeb’s armor traps fired off and pushed the blade away from his spine, leaving a shallow gash on the side of his neck, just above the shoulder.

Jeb was able to breath for a second and created a wall of telekinesis to shove the undead away from him before his breath caught again, forcing another bout of violent coughing.

When he opened his eyes, he was surrounded on three sides, each of the undead bearing a new short sword.

The floor beneath him softened then hardened again in the blink of an eye, trapping his knees and wrists in the stone.

Not enough to stop him for long.

Just long enough to butcher him like a stuck pig.