Chapter 28: God pronouns (Patreon)

Chapter 28: God pronouns

‘I intend to renegotiate the Deal with a paragon of humanity. That’s something that you could help me with, Jebediah Trapper. As one of the most powerful humans of your time, and a scion of mine, you make an ideal candidate.’

- Queen Mab, misleading the crap out of some loser.

***Queen Mab***

“So you see, humans are a lot like children,” Mab explained to the credulous child. “Myst is a very dangerous thing to possess, and much of the time it is used improperly. Does your mommy let you touch fire or handle a gun? Of course not, because she loves you, and I have loved humans for over a thousand years.” Certain ones, from time to time.

“If human Myst were under the control of someone more stable, who could correctly identify who is responsible enough to use it wisely, then dole it out accordingly, so many senseless tragedies could be avoided.” Someone other than me.

“ooo Waaa Aiii dooo?” Casey 3 asked.

*So what do I do?

“Just sign right here. After you do that, I’ll be able to keep any bad people from using their Myst to hurt others. Your mommy included.” Before, too, but who’s counting?Mab’s heart beat was carefully kept at a steady tempo. It wouldn’t do for her veins to pound and tip off the wretched spawn of Arthur.

The baby looked down at the long contract, her lips pursed in thought.

She picked up the pen and dipped it in the well of blood.

***Jebediah Trapper***

“FUCK!” Jeb shouted, sudden and involuntary, like a sneeze, startling the battle hyped veterans standing beside him.

She’s got Casey the third! A paragon of humanity. Not an ideal candidate, the perfect one.

Casey the third was like a humungous ball of Impact. Immortal almost from birth, the girl was smarter, stronger, faster than all of her peers, was friends with the emperor, her birth mother was a badass, powerful in her own right.

The baby was born with a royal flush in her hand. Twenty years from now she’d be running this place.

You don’t get much more paragon than that.

“Something wrong, Trapper?” Pikaku asked.

Jeb froze, glancing at Pikaku, his mouth hanging open as his mind chased it’s own tail.

I can’t tell him what Mab wants, because their goals align. No matter how cool of a guy the emperor has been on a personal level, if I were to tell him humans were about to be permanently stripped of their Myst, he would welcome the creation of a slave race, because it benefits the empire.

But you could tell him that Mab’s about to take advantage of Casey the third. He likes that girl.

But he’ll wanna know why, then he’ll figure out how she’s being taken advantage of.

Maybe I could ask for him to release me from the Deal?

“Would-“

Giving up now? That’s not your ‘Best Effort’.

The request to excuse himself died on his tongue because it wasn’t conducive to holding up his end of the Deal.

Shit! Jeb thought, his face twitching.

“For personal reasons, I would like to complete the terms of our Deal as quickly as possible.”

The emperor’s eyes narrowed.

“Why? Does it have something to do with Casey?”

Jeb’s lips tightened, the weight of his entire species bearing down on him.

Pikaku turned to face Jeb fully, the weight of the bird’s authority bearing down on him as he became the focus of all the Enforcers in the claustrophobic room.

“Mr. Trapper, you’ve performed admirably carrying out our agreement, and I applaud your quick wit and heroism, but I have not failed to notice the chaos that follows in your wake. I would very much like to avoid another situation like this,” he motioned to his restrained skeletal father.

“For the safety of my people…tell me why you’re so eager to finish your task.”

“I have a compulsion,” Jeb hemmed.

“But the compulsion isn’t what’s causing you to sweat. Why did you curse when he told us he doesn’t know where the baby is?” Pikaku cocked his head to the side.

“Because youdo, obviously,” He continued, connecting the sparse dots. “But you can’t tell me because telling me will cause intense backlash upon you or someone you care about.”

“That’s about as far as I can reason without more information,” the emperor said. “You will give us that information. Gentlemen, destroy the undead and place Mr. Trapper under arrest.”

At his words, the emperor’s former father was incinerated where he was held by a melas with fire-powers.

Ah, crap.Pikaku wasn’t a bad guy, he just thought Jeb was being intolerably shifty…which was pretty much true.

Damnit, what can I do? What’s my best effort play here? If I let them arrest me, the situation will pass me by, which is unacceptable. If I manage to escape, I have to deal with the undead damsels first, which will take far too long. Also unacceptable.

Jeb’s thumb brushed the blue scroll in his pocket.

Or we could explore option three.

The Enforcers were inching towards him, narrowing his options by the second.

Well, this isn’t gonna make me any friends.

“Operation Straightjacket.” Jeb said.

All the remaining traps inside Pikaku were activated by their secondary triggers.

Pikaku’s body was strapped in place by hundreds of telekinetic bands that lifted him up into the air.

Hundreds of harriers popped out of his body and began hovering around him menacingly like a swarm of bees, waiting for someone to try and get him down. It wasn’t enough to stop them forever, but it sure as hell would take a while untangling that mess.

“Really? Treachery?” Pikaku asked, his voice calm.

“You tried to arrest me first, so I think I’ll call it square.”

“Now back off, unless you want me to activate another trap on your beloved emperor.” Jeb said suggestively, causing the Enforcers to hesitate.

“Is there a trap on me, that would kill me? Yes or no.” Pikaku asked.

“…shit.” Yes or no questions. My only weakness. Jeb picked himself up with a rope of Myst and flung himself towards the exit.

Jeb warded off a blast of green fire and tripped a young salamander-man sprinting towards him at highway speeds, causing the kid to get a concrete facial.

Hopefully his Body mitigates that.

Another Enforcer tried to make the walls and ceiling foam up around Jeb, but he simply drilled through it with overwhelming force.

A bolt of teal Myst struck him in the chest, but fizzled because it wasn’t stronger than his. There was a slight itching sensation.

Two more flashed towards him and looked worrisome, so Jeb interposed a wall of telekinesis between himself and them, then tied the knot and made it permanent, blocking off the hallway for a few precious seconds.

Concrete Facial’s doppleganger met him outside the tunnel, looking fine.

“Can you copy yourself?” Jeb asked incredulously.

Instead of answering, the little butthead snuck a tendril of Myst past Jeb’s guard and landed a hit on his shirt, where a little brightly colored duplicate appeared, half-emerging from his shirt.

Then it started biting him.

“Ow, ow, that’s really cool, ow!” Jeb tore the shirt off and flung it at the charging enforcer’s face, parried another Myst attack and Violently changed direction, heading straight up. Most Enforcers couldn’t fly, and of those remaining, most couldn’t fly as high as Jeb.

Jeb lost pursuit in the lower stratosphere then rocketed back down to Pharos behind a mountain, re-entering the city from a low angle.

I wonder if they’re raise the bounty on me. Jeb wondered as he proceeded to head toward the prison where Borg was being detained…again.

Jeb caught a flash of movement to his left, which turned out to be Borg and Smartass, waving to him from the top of a building.

Borg opened a door and the three of them swooped in to what appeared to be an old lady’s apartment, with tea cozies and crocheted doilies.

“Borg.” Jeb said as he sat down.

“Jeb.” Borg nodded.

“Smartass,” Smartass said, thumbing her chest as she climbed onto Jeb’s lap.

“So I’ve got a problem,” Jeb said. “Well, humanity as a whole has a pretty big problem, and I need someone who’s sworn to always act in my best interest to talk to about it.”

Borg grabbed a pair of reading glasses from the end table beside him, put them on, crossed his legs and steepled his fingers, every inch the arrogant psychiatrist.

“Tell me about your father.”

“He was adequate,” Jeb shrugged. “Now about this problem. Mab has got a way to swindle Humanity out of a huge amount of Myst, rendering them nonmagical in a world where Myst is everything.”

“Which would be a…problem?” Borg asked.

“Humans might figure something out, but without Myst…I’m afraid they would become a slave race. Puppets of the fae.”

“And Mab. I know she wouldn’t stop at just Myst. If she got what she wanted from the humans, she would want more, and she would have more power with which to obtain it. She doesn’t stop unless something stops her.”

“So what are you gonna do about it?” Borg asked.

“I don’t know,” Jeb said, his stomach sinking. “There’s nothing I know of out there that’s powerful enough to force a meeting if she doesn’t want to meet. She’s already got what she wanted, so she’s probably gonna ghost me until after the deed is done.”

Even if Jeb made it back to the same spot in the Death Wilds, there was no guarantee the portal to the faewyld would be open. It probably wouldn’t.

Mab was going to raise Casey the third, distorting her perception of humans until taking away their Myst seemed like the right thing to do.

Jeb could picture the abuse at the hands of ‘Myst-crazed humans’ that Mab would arrange just to warp the girls’ mind. It tore apart his insides.

Damnit. Humanity’s royally screwed, and it’s my fault.

Jeb clutched his aching head with his left hand.

“Is that a scroll in your hand or are you just happy to see me?” Borg asked.

Jeb glanced down and noticed the blue leather clutched tight in his hand, the soft blue leather crinkling from the pressure.

Jeb took a deep breath.

Fuck it. Let’s find out what the offer was. Can’t be worse than dooming humans to an eternity of servitude.

Jeb unwrapped the loop and opened the scroll.

..

….

It was blank. Nothing but rich blue vellum.

Jeb frowned and unrolled the scroll further and further, revealing nothing but empty space, nearly five feet of blank scroll, until he finally made it to the very end.

OW.

Jeb winced as the headache redoubled as a short phrase written on the bottom of the scroll was revealed. It was so steeped in potent magic that it felt like sharing a room with a giant.

When it breathed out, Jeb breathed in. He felt like he was dangling on the edge of a bunk bed and the words were his bigger cousin, moments away from shoving him off at any second.

In exchange for these boons, I the undersigned, Jebediah Trapper, agree to become the mortal agent of Kes'thuali, acting in her interest in perpetuity and until the end of time.

Signed and enforced:

Kes'thuali the Destroyer

__________________

Jeb frowned, glanced below the phrase, then above it again. Then below it again.

Then above it.

Aw, crap, I shouldn’t have looked at this.

If Jeb had a way to kill his targets right here and now by signing one little contract, wouldn’t it be his ‘best effort’ to pursue that avenue?

“Damn it.” Jeb muttered, tossing aside the scroll, the back of his mind beginning to itch madly.

This is one of those, you sign it, then usher in the end of the world type deals. Only an idiot would sign it.

Jeb kind of felt like an idiot at that moment. Still, he didn’t have enough information, and that was an obvious setup.

I need somewhere to lie low while the emperor cools off and I plan how to handle the last of the undead. Somewhere I can get the information I need. Somewhere they would never expect to find me….

Jeb’s brows rose as he figured out the perfect place.

“Come on, we’re going to church.” Jeb said.

“Seriously?” Smartass asked. “Pharosian churches are kinda iffy on whether or not fairies count as people. And Borg is right out.”

Borg shrugged, nonplussed. “I’m incapable of being offended,” he said.

“Yes, seriously.” Jeb reiterated, nodding. “I need to ask this Kes’thuali lady some questions before my ‘best effort’ compulsion overrides my natural inborn desire to stay alive. So let’s go find a priest and ask them some pointed questions.”

There was a tiny bit of gratitude mixed in all the stress and fear: Jeb distinctly remembered that Kes’thuali was the deciding vote that stopped the gods from snuffing him out.

It was hard to put a face to the name though, Jeb’s memories from the astral plane were…fuzzy to say the least.

‘The Destroyer’ doesn’t sound pleasant, though. Honestly glad I can’t remember what she looks like. Probably some sort of creepy little girl.

Jeb shuddered.

Borg doctored up Jeb’s features with some self-studied techniques, then the three of them snuck out of the old lady apartment onto the street. Borg covered his rotting appearance with an old woman’s shawl, and Jeb did his best to make his gait look as natural as possible.

There was a lot of heat out there tonight for a one-legged man.

Borg, in an act that was both clever and repulsive, hooked his arm through Jeb’s, hunching over and forcing Jeb to take some of his weight, fully embracing the act of a frail old lady.

The smell was just barely within the realm of survivable.

“Do something about your smell, seriously,” Jeb hissed at him.

“I’m literally made of dead flesh. You should be glad that the spell that makes my blood poisonous also slows decomposition,” Borg whispered back.

“Why can’t you just make yourself not dead?” Jeb asked.

“Have you ever heard of the ship of Theseus?” Borg responded.

“I am notgetting into a philosophy debate with a robot.”

“If I remove all my undead parts and grant myself organic life…am I still Borg, or merely something that was designed by Borg?”

“Mm-mm,” Jeb said, shaking his head. “I’m not gonna engage with that.

They continued their theological stand-off until they arrived at the Grand Church of Mestikos.

It was surprisingly more crowded than one might expect, although the reasoning became clear once you thought about it a moment.

From wall to wall, as far as the eye could see, were huddled refugees from the undead plague. A variety of species in the white robes of the priesthood moved among them, speaking to the shelter-seekers, handing out a bit of food here and there.

Those priests have gotta be somewhere between level twenty and level fifty. Otherwise they wouldn’t be able to protect these people.

It also didn’t escape Jeb’s notice that a large portion of the refugees were human, running the gamut of men, women and children.

Jeb could smell the tinge of undead miasma in the air. It was a foul disease of Impact that claimed the lives of the severely weakened and hopeless.

Like a crowd of densely packed, exhausted, malnourished refugees.

Jeb picked out one of the priests from the crowd, making sure the guy was out of earshot of the others before he approached.

“Greetings,” Jeb said.  waving his hand a bit to get the kitri’s attention. The bird’s head swiveled on his long neck to peer at Jeb.

“What can I do for you, sir? You don’t appear to be going through the same difficulty as the others here.”

“Yeah, not exactly. I was just hoping to ask you some questions in exchange for a donation to feed these people,” Jeb said, pressing four bulbs into the priest’s hand. The gold coins glittered for a moment before disappearing into the man’s robes.”

“I know how this works, but trust me, I’ll be very disappointed in you if you don’t spend at least half of that on food,”

“Fair enough,” The priest said. “What would you like to ask?”

Jeb motioned to the dozen or so gigantic statues holding up the ceiling, each of them probably depicting a divine being of some kind.

“So, being human, I’m pretty ignorant of Pharosian religion, and I was wondering, which one of these is Kes'thuali the Destroyer?” Jeb asked.

The Kitri froze for a moment, his head cocked to the side.

“For someone who is ignorant of religion, you sure know some very esoteric names.”

“What does that mean?” Jeb asked.

“It means none of them are The Destroyer. There are no representations of it. Worshipping it is strictly forbidden.”

“Her.” Jeb corrected.

“What?”

“The Destroyer identifies as female.”

“You told me you were ignorant.” The priest said, his words slow and careful.

“I am.”

“…” The kitri’s eyes narrowed as he peered at Jeb.

“So why is it forbidden?” Jeb asked.

“Because it is trying to destroy existence. No person in their right mind would worship a being bent on killing them, nor allow it to be worshipped.”

“Soo…..why would a god want to kill their own reality? Did she just get bored with it or something?”

“Gods, you really are ignorant. Kes'thuali is not a god. The kitri said, his neck trembling in what Jeb could only assume to be righteous indignation.”

“Hey, calm down, have some more gold.” Jeb palmed a couple more bulbs into the priest’s hand.

“Now pick up where you left off.”

The priest pocketed the cash and sighed. “Kes'thuali is not a god. It is a being birthed from the nothingness beyond our reality with an appetite for destruction. The pantheon of pharosian gods immediately created a cage of divine power to contain the monster, but they are inadequate to the task of killing it, as it does not have life in the same way a god might.

“But they gave her a vote.” Jeb said, rubbing his chin. “Is it too much effort to prevent her from attending their meetings? Or are they all trapped in the same cage, so they include her out of pragmatism?”

“Excuse me?”

“Just thinking. How long has Kes'thuali been in a ‘divine cage’?”

“Five thousand years, give or take.”

“And in that time, Kes'thuali has contacted the mortal world…how many times?”

“None.” The priest said with conviction.

“So what you’re saying is, Kes'thuali is…naïve?”

“What?” the pries asked with a confused neck-waggle.

“How confident are you that this information is accurate? Wait, nevermind, you’re a priest.”

“I think you’ve overstayed your welcome.” The priest said.

“Probably,” Jeb said, turning away before shouting over his shoulder so everyone could hear. “Make sure some of that six pieces of gold I donated gets turned into food!”

All the nearby refugee’s ears perked up, some of them literally, as they heard Jeb’s parting words.

“More gold,” Jeb said, holding out his hand. He had more questions to ask.

“I’m more than just a gold-coin producing machine,” Borg said, another coin slowly manifesting out of pure Myst on his hand. “You know this is an absolute bitch to do because gold is a perfect Myst insulator right? I have to superheat a microscopic amount of air a fraction of a second before I make another granule so it sticks instead of creating dust –“

“Bup bup bup. Less talky, more bribeies.” Jeb said, eyeballing another priest. He was likely to get the same story, but he wanted to cross-check his references just in case the fist one left out some details. “First rule of having an extremely valuable skillset is that you run the risk of being forced to do it. That definitely comes with the territory of being able to print money.”

“I’ll keep your words of wisdom in mind and strive for mediocrity.” Borg said.

“You’d probably live longer.”

******

Jeb’s plan was starting to come together when the shit hit the fan.

Panic in a group of people spreads like wildfire, and Jeb could see it rushing toward him. It started with a panicked shout that rose above the crowd:

“They’re at the walls!” came a broken shout from a hoarse throat near the entrance to the grand temple. Then the murmuring, questions and cries of despair pulsed outward form that central location.

“Who’s at what walls?” Jeb muttered, asking pretty much the same thing as everybody else.

“The undead, they’re attacking Mestikos!”

The city? Attacking the city? From outside? Jeb frowned. I need to see this.

Jeb waded through the panicking mass of civilians and ducked outside the massive megachurch, craning his neck towards the sky. There were a handful of fliers, but they mostly seemed to be congregating on the north side of the city, not executing search patterns.

As long as he didn’t draw too much attention to himself, he might be able to catch a glimpse of what was going on.

Jeb flew low, going up to the rooftops, then floating over to the west a ways before heading north, so he wasn’t in the same location as the fliers above the north wall, but he could see what they were seeing.

And it wasn’t good.

There was an army of the dead at the north wall, with a seemingly limitless emerging from the river that ran through the center of the city.

They couldn’t make it through the massive metal grate, but that water was sure as hell poisoned at this point.

Mestikos was under siege by a force that required no food or water, and the weaker the defenders became, the more of them would convert to the enemy side. The land sloped north to south, allowing the heavier-than-air miasma to roll across the stone walls, seeking every crack it could find to enter the city and convert the living.

Gravity and time were going to do half their work for them.

Goddamnit, Pikaku’s dad. Even after you’re dead, you’re a pain in my ass.

Jeb’s gaze settled on ten banners among the horde of shambling corpses. The figures around those ten banners looked better equipped, moved more fluidly, and carried themselves with a certain alertness that belied their intelligence.

Mestikos had a real bad time ahead of it.

It was right then, when things couldn’t get any worse, that things got a lot worse.

!@(*&$@^())@(&*^@%
Error. Translating foreign Impact….

You have gained an Accolade: Ancient Compact.

Ancient Compact:

A representative of your species has made a binding Deal with a powerful entity.

In exchange for receiving the stewardship of Mab, Fairy Queen, you species has agreed to tithe all of their Myst.

You have partial immunity to this Deal, as you are an unwilling participant and have a similar level of Impact as the signer.

-90 Myst.

Jeb’s Myst holding him several hundred feet above the palisades turned into a wet noodle, and he began plummeting to the ground.

“Jesus, fudge, shit!” Jeb shouted as he flailed towards the ground, the wind howling in his ears.