Myst in DC (Side Story) Part 3 (Patreon)

Lexie giggled as the goblin rogue handed her a bag of gold coins in exchange for the gear they’d taken off her party. “No hard feelings, right?”

“No hard feelings,” Gwen agreed as she checked the various magical bags to make sure all of the important stuff was there. “Can you teach any of your hacked abilities?”

“Please?” Poppy asked hopefully, wanting to get something out of the mess they’d gotten themselves in.

“I don’t know, your friend tried to kill me,” Lexie complained as she glanced between the two adventurers. “That doesn’t exactly inspire me to teach you anything you can use to attack other people.”

“To be fair, we thought you’d respawn,” Gwen offered, not sure what else to say.

“Hmm, fair enough.” Lexie conjured a chocolate chip cookie that would give Gwen a levitation ability, mostly because giving her and Poppy the ability would piss off the undead mage that had started the fight and it wasn’t like the ability to levitate was all that useful in combat when they already had flying mounts in the world. “Here, this should give you the ability to levitate.”

“That’s a neat trick,” Poppy said as she looked at the chocolate chip cookie that Lexie was holding. “My gingerbread cookies just regenerate mana and health.”

“Trade?” Lexie asked as she handed Gwen the cookie. 

“Thanks…” Gwen trailed off as she looked at the cookie’s tooltip, expecting to get a few seconds or minutes of levitation from eating it, not permanently add the ability to her collection of abilities. She blinked as she reread the tooltip, wanting to make sure it actually said what she thought it did. She quickly ate the delicious cookie and activated her new ability, grinning as she floated off the ground. “This is awesome!”

“You aren’t going to save it?” Poppy asked, a touch surprised that she hadn’t kept the cookie for something important.

Gwen giggled. “There’s nothing to save, it gave me the ability to levitate, permanently and it doesn’t even cost mana which is good because I don’t have any.”

“No one is perfect,” Lexie said with amusement as she conjured another levitation cookie for Poppy. “Can show me your mana cookie spell? I want to see if I can duplicate it.”

“Sure.” Poppy conjured a refreshment table filled with various sweets then took the chocolate chip cookie. “Thank you.”

“You’re more than welcome,” Lexie replied as she ran through the spell in her mind, making sure she could duplicate it. ‘This is going to be awesome for parties.’ She picked up one of the gingerbread cookies and looked at it with her upgrade ability, curious how much mana it regenerated. ‘100% health and mana for 20 seconds of eating!’

Poppy blinked as the kid started laughing and doing a silly victory dance. “Did I miss something?”

“No clue,” Gwen replied as she watched Lexie grab a brownie and eat it with a silly smile on her face. “Maybe she’s not supposed to have sugar?”

“If that’s the case, I can see why,” Poppy agreed as the giggling girl bounced in place. “Are you okay?”

“Yep!” Lexie squealed as she started grabbing samples of the various candies so that she could easily reproduce them later just in case she couldn’t get the spell working. “Is there a limit to the amount of mana food we can eat?”

“Eventually you’ll puke or get a stomach ache,” Poppy said, knowing she’d eaten way too much food the first day they’d been trapped in the game.

“First time for everything,” Lexie muttered as she turned to look at Poppy. “Do you have the disenchanting rod?”

Poppy glanced at Gwen and the remaining bags. “Is everything there?”

“Everything important,” Gwen replied, familiar with the important bits of her friends’ kit, mostly because of how much they’d bragged about them.

“In that case, we should head back to town and hand out the gear.” Poppy pulled the disenchanting rod out of her bag and tossed it to Lexie. “Don’t break anything that is bind on equip, you can sell those.”

“I wasn’t planning on it,” Lexie replied as she studied the disenchanting rod, looking forward to figuring out how it worked.

“How much for another two cookies that give levitation?” Poppy asked.

“How much are you offering?” Lexie asked, not sure how much gold she could get for selling her various enhancement cookies.

“Fifty gold?” Gwen offered, not sure how much it was actually worth now that they could summon their mounts just about anywhere they’d actually fit but figuring it was worth a bit because it was instant and could save you from a fall.

“I’ll sell you two for fifty gold each if you promise not to give either of them to the crazy mage that attacked us.”

“Deal,” Gwen agreed as she grabbed two small bags of gold out of her travel bag and handed them over.

Lexie conjured two levitation cookies and passed them over with a grin. “Thank you for the business.”

“You’re welcome,” Poppy said, rather happy about her new levitation ability even if the entire experience had cost her a decent amount of gold.

“Best of luck, maybe I’ll see you around.” Lexie smiled then turned and flew back toward the keep, eager to let Rain know she’d at least partially solved their mana and gold issues.

0o0o0

Velana stared at the tooltip for her leggings that she’d let Rain upgrade. “There is something completely broken about healing for 25% of my maximum health every second that I’m standing still.”

Rain pulled her attention off the stump she was using for target practice. “It would have taken thirty three seconds of standing around to heal you before, that’s a long time in a fight and almost useless for an archer, I fixed it.”

Velana shook her head. “I keep expecting a GM to show up and scream at me for hacking.”

“I’m fairly sure any GM characters that got pulled here are focused on seeing what they can get away with now that they can’t get fired or at least that’s what I’d be doing.” Rain turned to look at Lexie as her sister landed next to her. “Any trouble?”

“Nope!” Lexie grinned. “They gave me the disenchanting rod and gold without any trouble and the mage gave me some really neat mana treats that regenerate 100% of your mana over twenty seconds, it’s fantastic!”

“Mage food?” Velana asked. “That’s a basic mage spell past a certain level or at least it is in the game.”

“It’s also a spell I didn’t have,” Lexie replied, rather happy about acquiring a decent source of mana regeneration.

“Mages burn through a lot of mana,” Velana mused as she glanced toward the mainland. “Speaking of spells, I should probably see if you can duplicate my beast taming spell.”

“That would be fantastic!” Lexie said, excited about having a summonable pet tiger as her father wouldn’t let her get any exotic pets because of the pet laws back home, which was bull because they spent most of their time in the family’s pocket realm.

“Can we train dragons?” Rain asked hopefully.

“Not for combat pets,” Velana said as she dismissed her void infused lizard and summoned a dark grey dragon like mount. “Of course, some of the mounts are basically dragonkin even if they lack a dragon’s intelligence and combat ability.”

“Neat,” Lexie said as she floated off the ground and circled around the dragon, studying the summoned construct with her upgrade ability. “Someone went out of their way to make sure the mounts couldn’t fight, that’s a bit annoying.”

“The company didn’t want the players using the mounts for combat in the game, which means they’re basically useless for combat,” Velana said as she shook her reins, causing her drake to launch itself into the air.

Rain grinned as they flew after the hunter, looking forward to picking up an awesome pet. She was a little disappointed when Velana stopped on a beach after less than a minute in the air. She flew down and landed as Velana dismounted and the drake vanished. “What are we looking for?” she asked as she looked around for monsters.

Velana pointed at the cat sized crab walking along the water line. “I figured we’d start small.”

“That’s probably better than trying to capture a tiger or a giant bear,” Lexie mused as she watched Velana raise her hands and drop into a non threatening stance.

“Ready?” Velana asked, not exactly sure how their ability to copy spells worked.

“Ready.” Lexie wasn’t sure if she should be impressed at the complexity of Velana’s monster taming spell, amused at the floating red hearts that floated from the hunter to the pet or amazed that someone had managed to condense what should be a lengthy ritual into a quick twenty second spell that a novice could cast. 

“And that is how you tame beasts,” Velana said as she pulled an old apple out of inventory and tossed it to her new pet. “Did you learn the spell?”

“I think so,” Lexie said as she mentally went over the new spell formula. “You managed to convert the crab into a spiritual creature that you can summon whenever you want, balanced by the fact that your armor is nearly useless against the creature while casting the spell and the small issue of your pet abandoning you if you don’t keep it fed.”

Velana shrugged. “I don’t really understand the spell, I just use it.”

“The person that designed the spell was either a genius or insane,” Rain said, thinking about the ‘sacrifice’ part of the spell that basically let the creature ignore your armor which would result in hunters getting torn apart if they weren’t careful in their pet selection or traveling with a really good healer.

“Probably a bit of both,” Velana said with amusement. “I normally grab a healer when I’m trying to tame anything dangerous...” she trailed off as a purple and black orb of dark energy appeared twenty feet above the water about a dozen feet out to sea. “Incoming!”

Rain quickly drew her sword as the glowing ball of dark energy expanded into a black and purple portal large enough to walk a horse through. “Huh,” she muttered as a purple skinned elf woman with long pale green hair fell out of the portal and hit the water with a splash, sputtering as she tried to get to her feet.

Lexie gestured and teleported the elf out of the water and over to the party a second before an almost supernaturally stunning red haired female in brown leather armor fell out of the portal and splashed into the water. “Are you alright?” she asked as the portal closed.

Dagny sputtered as she found herself looking up at two children and an attractive looking elf with dark purple skin and strange armor. “This isn’t the Dal Riata.”

“What’s the last thing you remember?” Velana asked as she studied the attractive women, almost certain they were gamers from elsewhere considering the portal.

“Before I fell out of the portal? I was logging in to check something before I swapped characters to speed run my sister’s character,” Dagny said as she got to her feet. “Why am I dressed like my character and why do I have a headache from hell?”

“Since when did you turn into an elf?” the red haired woman asked as she made her way over to the group of strangers and the elf that sounded and looked a lot like her sister if you ignored the color of her skin and her ears and silly looking over the top eyebrows. “Where are we?” she asked, focusing on the only other adult but keeping an eye on the two children as she could sense their life force and it was unbelievably strong.

“You’re in the Grizzly Hills,” Velana said as she glanced between the new adventurers, half expecting them to have issues when they ‘recovered’ their game memories.

“Yeah, right,” Dagny said sarcastically as she glanced around. “Vex! I know you set this shit up…” she trailed off as she realized she knew how to summon demons and that she remembered the Nightborne city.

“Take a breath, we’ll figure it out Dagny,” the redhead offered when her sister started hyperventilating.

Rain frowned as she used her upgrade ability to look at the redhead’s racial abilities and noticed that she had a collection of extra abilities that made zero sense given what she’d skimmed from the minds of the horde adventurers about the world and available characters. ‘Since when did they give humans immortality, chi manipulation, and life stealing as racial traits?’

“Look on the bright side, at least you didn’t log into a cannibalistic undead character or something similar,” Lexie said thinking about the other mage that had gone insane.

“No, just a starting character,” the redhead grumbled. “I blame Kenzi. Start a new character Bo, it will be fun, Bo. I could have been playing my maxed out paladin.”

Dagny laughed as she realized that things could be worse. “At least you’re level twenty and you’re not a cannibalistic undead.”

“No chance of that, I don’t even have any undead characters,” Bo said as she studied Velana and the two human looking children. “How do we get back?”

“No idea,” Velana admitted. “I had the same thing happen to me a couple of days ago. If anyone has figured out a way home, they’re being rather quiet about it. I’m Velana by the way.”

Rain grinned and waved at Dagny and Bo. “Rain and my sister is Lexie.”

“Pleased to meet you,” Lexie offered.

“Bo,” replied absently. “Lauren is going to be pissed,” she muttered, knowing that her girlfriend would be freaking out once she realized that she was missing.

“Kenzi and Dyson are going to be annoyed that they didn’t get to come,” Dagny said, fairly sure that Kenzi would be ecstatic to get powers.

“As far as we can figure, all they have to do is log in and they’ll show up,” Velana said.

“So we wait?” Bo asked as she looked around the beach, not sure how she was supposed to get home.

“You can but I wouldn’t bother, the portal is already closed, which means if your friends log in, they’ll probably end up in a different area.”

“That’s a bit annoying,” Dagny muttered as she checked her belt pouches, wanting to make sure all of her gear was stashed away. “Weird, I can see a tooltip on everything in my bags.”

“It’s basically a permanent identification ability,” Lexie said as she glanced over the elf’s various racial abilities. ‘How did you end up with a racial fear effect and chi manipulation?’

“That would save on tags for everything,” Bo said, trying to stay positive.

Dagny winced as she realized that she had a sizeable amount of alchemy ingredients in her vault that she might not have access to. “Please tell me we have our character’s bank vaults?” 

“You should,” Velana assured her. “Everyone else I’ve talked to has access to their vaults, but you have to get to a bank to access everything and the world is a lot larger or at least it certainly seems that way now that we’re actually here. What class are you?”

“Warlock,” Dagny said absently as she looked over her collection of inscription inks, taking inventory and looking for changes to her gear.

“Shaman,” Bo said absently as she looked through her belt pouches, checking to make sure her gear had made the transition. “I’m just glad that I already upgraded my bags.”

Lexie shrugged. “It could be worse, you could have logged into a warrior.”

“That would have been worse, my warrior is level 5,” Bo said thinking about her dwarven warrior that she’d only bothered to play once.

“What’s so bad about warriors?” Dagny asked, knowing that Kenzi had a kickass tank.

Velana pulled another apple out of her bag and tossed it to her crab. “Mostly the fact that you can do a certain amount of cross training now that you’re not playing by game rules but magic requires mana. Which means that warriors and rogues are out of luck when it comes to casting spells.”

“Does that mean I can learn to create portals?” Dagny asked hopefully, always a little annoyed that her warlock couldn’t open portals because of game balance reasons.

“Probably, the girls helped me learn how to cast Flamestrike and I started as a hunter,” Velana said cheerfully. 

“I don’t mind sharing spells,” Rain said, figuring it would be nice to have some help with the various dungeons and crafting skills.

“You can cast Famestrike?” Dagny asked, half expecting the children to be actual children.

Rain gestured toward the water and cast her Flamestrike spell, creating a pillar of fire on the water that quickly burned itself out. “Sure, we’re magic users, magic is easy.”

Dagny blinked as she realized that none of the armor pieces she’d looked at had a level requirement which was a change from what she remembered. “I’m not seeing a level requirement, does that mean we can grab Bo better gear?”

“That’s the nice part of not having a level mechanic built into our classes,” Velana said. “The flipside is we’re stuck improving our skills the old fashioned way. 

“Which means getting better is going to suck,” Bo grumbled, wishing that she’d logged into her paladin, it would certainly have made it easier to survive the journey home, something she wasn’t giving up on, even if people hadn’t found a way to get back yet.

“On the bright side, it shouldn’t be that hard to find someone that can make you really high end gear,” Dagny mused.

“True,” Bo admitted. “Are the factions like the game?” she asked, wanting to get some idea of what she’d be dealing with until she could get home.

“Sort of.” Velana shrugged. “Everything is a bit up in the air right now. A group of adventurers, basically gutted a decent percentage of the Forsaken’s leadership, mostly because no one saw the point in letting them cause problems and the bastards would stay dead. The orcs lost some of their leaders, mostly the idiotics when they tried to conscript a group of adventurers and the adventurers told them to piss off.”

“They should have just offered them gold,” Dagny said.

“It would have been easier,” Velana agreed. “Either way, a couple of max level idiots decided they could take Sylvanas. They learned the hard way that she’s nigh unkillable and has a terrifying pet bear that she can summon.”

“Bears are neat,” Rain said, intending to pick up at least one pet bear before she had to leave.

“Not when they’re using your bones as chew toys,” Velana said.

“Are the Nightborne Horde?” Dagny asked.

Velana shook her head. “Considering the only Void and Nightborne elves currently running around are immortal player characters that are nearly impossible to kill, everyone is quite content to let them bounce between the factions and spend their gold however they want.”

“What do you mean by immortal?” Dagny asked.

“PCs don’t stay dead as long as you don’t die trying to kill a dungeon heart.”

“Dungeon Heart?” Bo asked, unfamiliar with the term.

“Most of the instances in the game were converted into regenerating dungeons that we can kill for loot. From what I’ve heard, every dungeon has a door that appears after the last boss has been defeated that opens into a dark reflection of the dungeon with insanely powerful versions of the dungeon monsters. Somewhere at the end of the insanely difficult dungeon is a core that controls the dungeon.”

Lexie tossed a thought to her sister, ‘We’re going to need to check the cores at some point, just to see if we can duplicate them.’

‘Are you trying to get us grounded until we’re eighteen?’ Rain asked she spotted a cat sized crab moving in their general direction. “I’ll be right back,” she said as she walked over toward the crab and started casting her new taming spell, figuring she might as well test it on something that wouldn’t cause Velana to have a heart attack.

Velana pulled out her bow as she watched the red hearts float from Rain to the crab, ready to shoot the critter if it proved more dangerous than she was expecting. “If you destroy the core, the dungeon should die, at least according to the warning on the door. Of course, your immortality doesn’t apply in that part of the dungeon, which means you’ll die permanently if something manages to kill you while you’re there, provided someone can’t resurrect you.”

“I can’t see most people risking it,” Bo said as she watched the cute hearts float toward the crab that was trying to pinch Rain’s feet, to no apparent effect.

Velana sighed. “Of course, if you kill the core, you’ll lose your immortality forever along with the rest of the raid which means best of luck getting people to actually agree to help considering Azeroth is basically a death world.”

“Do the mailboxes still work?” Bo asked, figuring she could send a letter to Kenzi in case she ended up pulled into the game.

“Yeah, that was one of the first things I tested when I got here,” Velana replied.

“In that case, I’ll send her a quick letter.” Dagny focused and used her cantrips ability.

Lexie pulled her attention off her sister and focused on the strange magical book that Dagny had conjured, looking at it with her upgrade ability. “Nice, it works as a spell book of everything you’ve learned and it allows you to send mail.”

“Huh, that’s new. It used to be a mailbox ability. Sadly it only lasts a minute and a half,” Dagny said as she sent a quick note to Kenzi’s mage, telling her that Bo and her had run into some friendly adventurers and that they’d meet up in Dalaran later. “Hmm, it’s not giving me an error message which means Kenzi might be running around as her mage.”

Bo sighed in relief. “Good, we’d never hear the end of it if she’d ended up a warrior without magic.”

“I can’t say I blame her, magic is awesome,” Rain replied as she finished the ritual and the crab stopped trying to kill her. “I think I’m going to enjoy having a pet.”

Dagny quickly tried to send a note to a random string of characters and numbers and grinned when her book popped up a note that said Ss8noglex777 wasn’t linked to the system. “Sweet, I just tried a random name and it popped up an error message, which means Kenzi is playing as her mage.”

Velana glanced at Dagny’s rather impressive gear. “What level were you?”

“Max, why?” Dagny asked as she looked up from her book at the hunter.

“Because you’re a warlock.”

“What does that have to do with it?” Rain asked as she conjured an apple for her crab.

“Warlocks can summon people,” Velana replied with amusement.

“I’d have to be in a party…” Dagny trailed off as she realized that she remembered summoning people and that the party concept was just part of the game to keep people from harassing random people. “Okay, that might actually work. So, you basically focus on the portal opening once I start the spell and that should summon Kenzi, in theory.”

“In theory?” Bo asked.

“That’s the best you’re going to get considering I’ve never actually cast the spell, I just remember casting it which isn’t the same.”

“You should be fine, all of my abilities worked,” Velana offered, figuring a confidence boost would help.

“What does Kenzi look like?” Rain asked, wanting to make sure she had a good idea of what Kenzi should look like if there was a chance that something might go wrong.

“Her mage is a void elf, so I’m assuming long ears, purple hair and light purple almost blue skin but Bo looks more like herself than her character so, no clue,” Dagny said, suddenly wanting a mirror so that she could look at herself to see how closely her memories matched her new form. “There’s also a small chance that she’ll look like a humanoid made out of black shadows if she’s in her void form.”

“Good to know.” Lexie focused on Dagny, curious how her summoning spell worked.

“Hopefully this works.” Dagny started casting her summoning spell, trying to bring her mom to her.

Rain focused on figuring out the formula for the spell as Velana and Bo focused on activating the portal.

Lexie watched the portal as a tall pale skinned elf with large pointed ears, pale purple skin and dark purple hair that had several locks that were glowing blue. She glanced at the elf’s black swimsuit bottoms and black silk shirt that hugged her generous breasts. “That looks cold.”

Kenzi shivered. “Don’t remind me, I was nice and toasty by the fire.”

“Wear clothes,” Bo teased as she glanced over her friend, a touch sad that Kenzi claimed to be straight because she wouldn’t mind playing with her breasts and ears.

“If I had any extra, I would,” Kenzi replied as she stepped over to Bo and pulled her friend’s cloak around her then studied the group. “I’m Kenzi.”

“Rain, Velana, and I’m Lexie,” Lexie said as she gestured toward the people that Kenzi wouldn’t know.

“Welcome to the Grizzly Hills, at least we’re not in Icecrown,” Dagny said cheerfully.

“If you had tried summoning me in Icecrown, I wouldn’t have come,” Kenzi said as she leaned against Bo, using her as her personal space heater.

“Huh, I didn’t think it actually told people where I was summoning them to,” Dagny said

“It doesn’t,” Kenzi admitted. “Questionable clothing aside why did I log in and fall out of a portal?”

“I’m guessing magic,” Rain said, wishing she’d seen the spell that pulled everyone into the world as it sounded fascinating. “Speaking of magic, you should probably summon your other friend then we can head back to the Tower and get warm while we sort out clothes and share spells.”

“I’m all for getting warm,” Kenzi agreed as Dagny started casting.

Rain looked at the tall athletic looking ‘human’ that stepped out of the portal with her upgrade ability. “Supernatural strength and speed. Heightened senses, stamina and agility and you can shape change into a wolf and half wolf hybrid but you’re not a werewolf. How does that even work?”

“These are not the droids you are looking for,” Kenzi said as she waved her hand at Rain.

“First of all mind control doesn’t work on Dad’s side of the family and second, I didn’t want any droids to start with,” Rain complained, having plenty of droids at home.

“How are you immune to mind control?” Kenzi asked.

“It counts as mental influence, we’re basically immune and we have magical defenses against status effects which might cover it under confusion,” Lexie explained. “Mostly, it requires a brain.”

“I’m going to punt you into orbit,” Rain complained.

“But I’m your sister and you love me,” Lexie teased.

Rain stuck her tongue out at her sister. “Stop whining, you’ll survive.” 

“Now I know you’re joking,” Kenzi said, feeling better now that she had Bo’s cloak around her and Bo to keep her warm.

“Yeah, it’s sort of pointless when she can fly. So, speaking of magic, we should probably head to the Tower just over there,” Rain said as pointed at the Shadowfang Tower as it phased into existence, “so Kenzi can get warm and we can work on improving people’s abilities and gear.”

Dyson glanced between the girls then focused on Rain. “You don’t smell quite human, what are you?”

“Magic users,” Lexie said.

“Technically we’re all magic users,” Velana said, curious about the girls and their strange abilities.

“It’s too cold out here to argue, we can argue inside the nice warm keep,” Kenzi said, trusting Bo to be able to deal with them if they were up to mischief.

“Sounds good to me,” Lexie said as she floated off the ground several inches and floated toward the keep.