Chapter 27: The Hunt (Patreon)

***Jeb’s Notes, 6 hours ago***

Former emperor Yikipa Kupei

Victor of the battle of….

Too many to list. Led from the front. Almost united the continent until his death at the battle of Garenth Falls in the death wilds.

Mab?

…if the former emperor had an effective level over three thousand due to damsel doping, only Mab, Vex, God or maybe his own son could have killed him.

Nevermind, I’m not here to figure out whodunnit.

864 years old. Dude’s been around the block. Seems like the kupei family might dabble in immortality practices.

Old, experienced, underhanded, brilliant, powerful. A bad ruse won’t work. 863 years of is gonna be hard to beat.

Need a chink in the armor.

Technology? Inflexibility?

Modern battles use line formations and occasionally champions fighting champions. They have for a millennium, as new tech is never better than a spell or Class.

Need to catch off guard with a red herring. Too smart for red herring? Distract with a checkmate. Much better. How to find him?

Smell?

Satellites!  If scientists can determine a planet’s atmosphere a million miles away with a telescope, there’s gotta be a way to see smells.

I.D. his location and force his hand. Occupy his mind with the details of what a newfangled satellite can do, use as a powerfully distracting red herring to mask a simple setup.

What can the actual spell do? He’s just too strong and wily to get killed by a simple spell. it just doesn’t have the range to take him out by itself. I just can’t summarize an ancient like that. he’s gotta have way more up his sleeve than I could ever predict.

Reorient expectation. Use spell as support rather than a magic bullet. Pair it with someone who actually has a shot at killing. Mab, vex, or God…and son.

His son?

Use emperor as bait, satellite as distraction, spell as trump card? Is it even strong enough to do any good?

Jeb paused and looked up from his musing when the System notification blared to the forefront of his mind:

Congratulations, you have achieved level 50 as a Mystic Trapsmith, and unlocked the second Class Ability.

Mystic Framework: User may build an immobile framework of Myst that allows the user’s Myst inside to be manipulated in higher concentrations and detail. The framework must be rebuilt each time, dissipates when not in use.

Jeb’s eyebrows rose.

A torrent of information and someone else’s hard-earned experience flooded into Jeb. He could almost perceive it being shoved into him on the fifth dimension.

If Jeb had to describe it in layman’s terms, the skill was a bit like like going from working with cheap stone tools in a grassy field to a mechanic’s well-appointed garage. Lathe, band-saw, jig, belt-sander, you name it.

Essentially, the framework provided a massive qualitative uptick in the traps he could produce…although it was not strictly limited to traps, it just synthesized very well with Mystic Triggers. Hence it being his second Ability.

Poking the knowledge around in his head, he felt it could also be used as a form of booster and safety device when experimenting with creating new Myst wavelengths.

Higher accuracy and easier manipulation in addition to myst walls around the experiment which could cut off the power, deaden explosions or disrupt grey goo scenarios before they got out of control…it was an excellent ability.

Sweet. Although at the moment the only use I have for it is supercharging the trap to murder the former emperor.

Admittedly, that’s a very relevant use. Now I just needto find a way to talk to him in private.

Jeb glanced down at the notepad.

Get arrested?

****Jebediah Trapper, now***

Jeb sat on the side of the road, practicing with his new Ability. Currently his was pushing his micro-spells to their limit, with a glowing rectangular box of reddish-orange myst between his thumb and forefinger.

Myst flowed out of his fingers and entered two ends of the box. One was the feed of raw unadultered Myst, and one powered the Framework itself, a complex piece of magical machinery that he currently activated more by instinct than understanding. Which would be rectified.

Inside the framework, Jeb could exert a level of control over the Myst that he’d never experienced before. Unparalleled accuracy and density.

To that end, Jeb was toying with the idea of making something akin to a microchip.

I need a book on computing and logic gates. Maybe a lot of books. He already knew a lot about how to do it magically, but some study on the human version could definitely streamline things.

Jeb was currently trying to do something he’d never done before: Create a self-sustaining spell with simple logic gates that could take raw Myst input and output a pre-defined spell.

In short: a way to recharge his most common, simple traps without having to manually create them each and every time. His first tool created entirely out of Myst.

Good, this one hasn’t exploded yet… he thought, before carefully allowing the Framework to dissipate.

Once the stabilization of the Framework was removed, a tiny flaw in the spell erupted, and the entire thing went whirling wildly off into the distance like a deflating balloon.

Well, back to the drawing board, Jeb thought, frowning before a vague sense of oddness struck the back of his mind.

They’re coming.

Jeb stood from his rock with his arms crossed, facing the empty road.

An instant later, no less than six invisible Enforcers rebounded off a soft wall that flickered into place in response to their presence. The Enforcers flashed into visibility as they landed, weapons out and ready to throw down.

Jeb kept his hands tucked away. Putting your hands up wasn’t quite innocuous when Myst was a factor.

At the speed they’d been moving, they’d be halfway to their destination in a handful of minutes.

“Afternoon,” Jeb said, meeting their eyes one by one. “I’d like all of you to turn around and head back to the palace.”

“What’s the meaning of this?” The one in the lead asked, an older looking Kitri.

“Hey, are you one of Vresh’s cousins?” Jeb asked one of the younger Melas Enforcers in the corner of the formation who looked familiar. “How’s your dad? Is he Vresh’s son yet?”

If I married Vresh that guy would be my step-son. Politics is weird.

“Jebediah Trapper? Why are you here? “We just saw you a hundred miles in the air.”

“Correction,” Jeb said, holding up a finger. “You just saw Vresh a hundred miles in the air. I realized I’m not actually required to be there to lift the satellite. Only my Myst. What I am currently doing is holding you here until such a time as the emperor decides to call for assistance.”

“We don’t take orders from you.”

“Of course you don’t, but I’m fairly certain that we’ll see something that will make you decide to turn around and head back to the city. I’m just giving you a head-start.”

Jeb rocked on his heels as the silence of the moment engulfed them.

“Aaany minute now.”

Distant thunder drew their attention back to Mestikos as one of the towers sloughed off of the ivory palace, the result of some internal explosion.

“Enforcers! Back to the emperor!”

There it is, Jeb thought, swaddling himself in telekinesis and putting on speed, keeping pace with the Enforcers currently making highway speeds look tame.

***Emperor Pikaku, Uniter of the Continent, Ruler of Mestikos, Level 328***

“Boop.”

An explosion rocked the throne room, as the entire palace shuddered violently.

The doors burst open as megatons of stone that used to be palace collapsed into the halls, filling them entirely, making escape impossible. At least not while both of them were alive.

“You didn’t have anywhere else to be, did you?”

Father turned around, his neck waggling in amusement as he spread his arms.

“You tricked me. My boy, I’ve never been prouder of you.”

Pikaku nodded in acknowledgment. “A sad statement, if true.”

“You know what I was least proud of? Your choice of Myst. I told you a strong country needs a strong ruler, and what do you do? You idolize Myst that’s only useful for bureaucracy and calling for your MOTHER!”

Father’s Myst swirled around him, and he leapt forward, speed and power nearly beyond Pikaku’s ability to respond to.

Father’s talons passed through the back of the throne like soft cheese. Pikaku was barely able to ward off the blow, a shooting pain erupting through his wrist as he was catapulted off his seat and into the wall.

“That should’ve broken you, unless you finally raised Body instead of relying on your women.” Father said, glancing down at his hand, where several tiny telekinetic needles had pierced his wrist bones. He flexed and the needles crumbled to nothing, leaving small holes in the bone.

“Huh. You realize I don’t feel pain or bleed, right?”

“You, father, like any other thing, are made of matter. And all matter has a certain level of durability. Harrier.”

As soon as Pikaku said the word, three tiny dots of glowing white blinked into existence around him, moving erratically, like flies made of pure light.

“Well put,” his father said, watching the Myst constructs carefully. “And what will these little quaint little motes do?”

“They’re Harriers. They harry you.”

“Seems like they’re just flickering around.” Father said.

Pikaku spun up the Myst core in his chest, praying that he still had enough power to summon his general and the enforcers that followed him. His power was no longer godlike, and was thus extremely limited in the scale and scope of the causality it could bend to summon others.

“Gorbas -“Father leapt forward, riding a tide of crimson Myst, scattering Pikaku’s imploding silver Myst to the wind, ruining the summon as he unleashed a flurry of swipes at pikaku’s face. Pikaku ducked out of the way, blocked what he could, but he still wound up with gouges across his face and chest, being wiped violently across the marble floor like a bloody rag.

The harriers took the opportunity to flash down toward Father’s back, operating almost entirely in the ancient warrior’s blind spots.

Each of the three harriers independently chose a limb and streaked towards it, causing Father’s attacks to slow down long enough for Pikaku to disengage.

“Keensha bra gosh!” Father shouted, snapping out a punch at the harriers, which immediately flickered away, moving even faster than the boney warrior could, once again moving erratically. One seemed as through it was going to flicker towards Father, but stopped and pulled away when the former emperor tensed.

“I’ll admit they’re annoying, but-“ His father paused as he took a step and had to catch his balance. His rear toe talon had been perforated by one of the harriers, and snapped off, causing a tiny instant of imbalance.

The harriers didn’t let the opportunity go to waste, flashing down at Father, who devolved into a blur of motion, warding them off and dodging them with unnatural alacrity. however, the harriers immediately withdrew as soon as the skeletal kitri regained his poise enough to try and destroy the spells.

“Gorbash Jes-“

Father let out a war-honk, and charged Pikaku, his eyes flickering with flame that flashed off the smooth obsidian curve of his claws.

Pikaku was unable to finish without losing his beak, forced to close his mouth and jerk his head out of the way of the attack, which then changed into a knife-hand strike to his leg.

His father’s claws parted flesh as easily as steel, embedding themselves in Pikaku’s thigh.

Several more telekinetic needles jutted out from Pikaku’s thigh and struck Father’s wrist, bouncing off the concentration of Myst father had placed around his joints.

“You let yourself become the BAIT in a forced battle of attrition!? What kind of fool are you!? After everything I taught you about being an emperor!?”

Father had already ascertained that the harriers were designed to slowly wear away at the creature’s speed advantage by targeting his feet and joints, and had concentrated his Myst around them, keeping his joints impenetrable to Jebediah’s nasty spell.

The entire game plan was to wear Father down, one tiny piece at a time. The harriers were doing their job just by forcing Father to devote his Myst to defense.

“This isn’t a battle. This is a hunt.” Pikaku struck out with his claws, targeting the creature’s jaw.

Snap! A small piece of the undead’s jaw snapped against Pikaku’s aligned claws, weakening any future bite attempts.

One tiny piece at a time.

A shield popped up and cushioned the monster’s reflexive kick, launching Pikaku backwards without knocking the air out of him.

“Gorbash Jeshki-“

The monster arrived just in time to stop Pikaku from speaking, battering the emperor with a series of strikes. anything that would cause more than a bruise was softened by small telekinetic shields.

Meanwhile, Pikaku grabbed a hand and forced a torrent of his own raw Myst into it. Myst was the only Attribute that had ever truly rivaled his father’s. He expected it would be similar for this creature.

The crimson protection was washed away, and the harriers leapt upon the opportunity, turning the undead’s wrist into a pockmarked mess.

With a grunt of effort, Pikaku snapped the hand directly off the creature’s arm before tossing it aside.

The undead stood stock still, staring at the skeletal hand as Pikaku tossed it aside, skittering across the stone floor of the room.

“I suppose a change of tactics is necessary.” He reached under his ribcage, concealed by his voluminous robes and retrieved a short sword made of heavily enchanted faradan. It sported a pommel with a rather large enclosed Prism feeding a variety of magical effects.

A harrier came a bit too close and was swatted like the fly it resembled, exploding with a bang reminiscent of a firecracker, its Myst dissipating into the environment.

The Myst was cannibalized by the other two, causing them to burn brighter and fly faster.

“Clever,” the undead muttered before flipping his grip on the blade and stabbing himself in the chest.

Pikaku only had the blink of an eye to process what his enemy was doing, barely able to bound away before an explosion of fog blanketed the room.

“You tricked me with human tactics. I think it’s only fair I return the favor.”

“This, boy,” the undead said, running his claws through the fog rolling from his rib cage. “Is what’s known as Nerve Gas. It’s fatal to anything with less than fifty Body and paralytic to anything below one hundred and fifty, above that it’s merely inconvenient.”

He eyed Pikaku.

“Where do you fall, son?”

Paralytic, but Pikaku wasn’t going to reveal that. Besides, paralysis was death in a fight like this, and they both knew it. Plus, he could be lying.

And of course, the bastard doesn’t breathe. A simple, brutally effective tactic, as he was known for.

Pikaku retreated to the relatively unspoiled air as far away from the creature as he could get and took a deep breath, holding it as he took a stance.

One way or another, you’re not leaving this room, Father.

The undead drew the blade back out of his own chest with a flourish and charged.

***Jebediah Trapper***

“Move away!” Jeb shouted to the half dozen or so Enforcers digging through the rubble. They hustled aside as Jeb’s Myst ballooned out of him.

Jeb made a drill seven feet in diameter with a twenty foot long hollow tube behind it, and started boring straight through the ruined palace, a procession of powerful warriors directly behind him.

They made good time, and in only fifteen tense seconds of drilling, they emerged in the empty chamber that Jeb had reinforced with his Myst only a few hours earlier to serve as a roach-motel for the undead.

I really hope the emperor keeps the cause of the collapse a bro-secret between the two of us, ‘cuz I cannot pay for the reconstruction of a palace. We could always blame the undead dude.

Jeb’s skin went cold when his eyes took in the situation.

The emperor was mangled,leaning against the far wall, his lacerated arms held in front of himself defensively, his breathing extremely shallow, yellow feathers caked in his own blood.

The undead stood over him, blood dripping from a faintly glowing blue blade in the creature’s hand. His other hand was crawling aimlessly across the floor.

The creature glanced at them, then back down at the emperor.

“I didn’t let you finish saying anything.” he said with an accusatory tone.

“I’m sure that’s the only way people can rush to my defense.” Pikaku said, not too wounded for sarcasm.

“Bah.” The creature made a quick jab for Pikaku’s throat which a glowing white dot intersected, knocking to the side just enough for the emperor to slump out of the way.

Seeing this, the Enforcers went ape-shit, and Jeb had no choice but to get out of the way, or they would charge through him.

Jeb dropped the force drill and dove to the side as the Enforcers flew past him.

Jeb tasted something on the air as he pushed himself back to his foot, his lungs seizing mid-breath.

I know that smell!

The bony bastard had filled the room with sarin gas! Where the hell did he get his hands on – doesn’t matter – just gotta rectify the situation.

Jeb stopped breathing entirely and took stock. There was one major hole allowing air in right now: the one he’d drilled in. If he had two holes, he could form a bladder of telekinetic force and violently shove fresh air into the room…

Okay I don’t have time to create a second air-hole, but I can just use a wall of force to split the seven foot hole into two parts. Ideally, he would flush all the air inside out by forming a bladder around it, but there were no less than ten people engaged in a swordfight inside. He couldn’t just bladder them.

Having figured out what he needed, Jeb made what was essentially a massive syringe out of telekinetic force, nearly bigger than the palace. The ‘needle’ was about four feet wide and ran the length of his tunnel into the room. He ducked down against the side of the wall and clung to something heavy.

Fire in the hole, Jeb thought as he started to depress the ‘plunger’ side of his massive syringe full of air.

Whoosh!

A tremendous wind blasted the combatants, although they barely noticed, so focused were they on their game of cat and mouse with the skeletal creature. Their only acknowledgement of the wind was a change of stance. Their eyes never left their prey.

It was stronger and faster than they were, but they outnumbered it. The Enforcers surrounded the undead like a pack of hunting dogs, taking turns darting in for a furtive attack before backing away quickly, not giving the creature time to effectively deal with any single one of them.

Jeb ran up to Pikaku while the Enforcers kept the creature at bay.

The emperor’s shallow breathing was almost nonextistant. His eyes were alert, but fading fast.

“The poison is designed to stop your breathing,” Jeb said. “I fixed the air in the room, but I’m going to need you to lower your Myst defenses to allow me to manually breathe for you.”

Jeb thought he saw a nod. Maybe there was none because of the paralysis, but when he went to force air into Pikaku’s lungs, His Myst was able to get past the emperor’s powerful magic.

It had been tricky to install those traps inside him when the emperor had more Myst than Jeb.

“Okay, breath going in,” Jeb murmured so Pikaku would be able to anticipate the movement. “Breath going out.”

“Kiyaku Uapi.” Pikaku croaked as Jeb worked his lungs like a bellows, his Myst exploding into the past. -I.e. imploding-

“By all the gods, what’s going on here?”

Jeb glanced over his shoulder and spotted a kitri in what could only be described as religious garb, clambering down out of the hole in the wall.

“My lord!” the priest shouted, eyes widening upon spotting the emperor slumped in the corner of the room.

“Shit,” the undead monster cursed, darting towards the priest. An enforcer full-body tackled the skeleton, receiving several mortal wounds from the glowing faradan blade, but dragging the creature forcibly away from the healer.

The priest paid no attention to any of this, sprinting towards the emperor at full speed, sliding to a halt on his knees in front of him.

There was a lightning bolt of pure minty white healing Myst that crossed the gap between the two of them, so strong Jeb could taste it behind his eyeballs.

A moment later, Pikaku tapped Jeb on the shoulder and Jeb moved out of the way as the kitri levered himself to his feet.

“Let’s finish this. Save him.” He pointed at the rapidly bleeding out Enforcer before rejoining the battle, snatching the blade from the fallen warrior’s hand.

It wasn’t a fair fight. It was a brutal tag-team against a stronger opponent. A pack of wolves hunting a sabertooth.

It was long and drawn out, every now and then a blow landing on the undead’s joints, diminishing his power by an imperceptible amount. But the damage accumulated, until finally a fatal blow was struck, the emperor himself carving the creature’s ribcage in half before lopping off the monster’s legs.

Oh, thank god. Jeb felt palpable relief as the skeleton was checkmated. The toughest, most dangerous target was taken care of. All the other Damsels were just a case of mopping up. The enforcers could easily do it by themselves, and Jeb’s Deal would be complete.

“Hold him,” Pikaku spat, and the surrounding Enforcers restrained the remaining arm and head of the former emperor.

“Where’s the baby?” Pikaku demanded.

The skeletal partial torso cocked its head to the side.

“I don’t know. I thought you had her.”

Wait, what?

“Oooh…shit.” The words rolled off Jeb’s tongue unbidden.