Myst in DC (Side Story) Part 4 (Patreon)

Kenzi pulled her attention off the door where Bo and Dyson had wandered off to feed Bo’s hunger for life force now that everyone was reasonably caught up with the current state of the world and focused on Rain. “You mentioned being able to upgrade abilities, what do you want in exchange for upgrading some of mine?”

Rain glanced up from the pair of leather shoes she’d just finished upgrading for Bo. “I wouldn’t mind a unicorn mount,” she said wistfully, “but I’d settle for gold or help in a couple of dungeons.”

Kenzi grinned as she realized she might actually know where to find a unicorn mount. “I might know where to find a unicorn, depending on how well the world lines up with the game.”

“Really?” Rain asked hopefully.

“Karazhan?” Velana asked, thinking about the puzzle box under the crypt. “That’s assuming someone hasn’t looted it.”

“It was a rather annoying and long quest chain. I doubt anyone has had the time or inclination to check on the puzzle box in the last couple of days,” Kenzi said. “If nothing else, we could always try killing the first boss in Karazhan for the nightmare.”

“A nightmare mount would be an acceptable second choice,” Rain agreed as she skimmed Kenzi’s mind for everything she remembered about the unicorn mount and Karazhan. “Can you help me get there or will I have to fly there?”

“How much mana do you have?” Velana asked, less than happy about taking a child anywhere near Darkshire until the worgen were dealt with. “Should we really take them to a dangerous dungeon?”

“Lots and yes,” Rain replied with amusement.

“Just because she’s a kid doesn’t mean she can’t take care of herself,” Kenzi said, used to hanging around fey that were far more dangerous than they looked. “Besides, if the dungeon is like the game, the first room is safe enough.”

Velana sighed as she realized Kenzi had a point. “That’s assuming we can trust them to stay in the first room.”

“You’re the experts,” Rain said, doing her best to resist the urge to walk outside and rip a tree out of the ground and toss it into orbit or something to prove that she could take care of herself. 

“Fine, we’ll check the puzzle box first,” Velana said, figuring the upgraded resistances were worth the trip and reasonably confident that they could keep the children safe by flying directly to Karazhan. “How much can you boost our resistances?”

“Your Chill of Night ability reduces the shadow damage you take by 1%, let’s see how far I can push things.” Rain opened her upgrade menu and slid the slider on Kenzi’s resistance ability all the way to 100% then hit accept when the slider wouldn’t go any further.

Kenzi blinked as she lost her balance and fell onto the couch as a wave of mana washed over her. She stared at her Chill of Night’s tooltip as it suddenly jumped to immune to shadow damage. “Damn, that’s awesome!”

“That’s me,” Rain replied with amusement as she looked at the rest of Kenzi’s racial abilities. “Do you want me to reduce the cooldown on your void teleport ability?”

“How much?” Kenzi asked, not wanting to get into debt with a powerful magic user, once was enough.

“I’ll trade information on dungeons, I’m looking for interesting spells that I can copy from some of the monsters and humanoids, magitech I can reverse engineer, or interesting trinkets that I can turn into something useful.”

“Tempest Keep in Outland had some interesting magical technology, though I’m not sure how much you’ll be able to use.”

“It’s also a lot more dangerous than Karazhan,” Velana warned. “Of course, by that logic, all of Northrend should be more dangerous than Outland.”

“I’m curious if we can find actual spell books in Karazhan,” Kenzi said thoughtfully, wondering how faithfully the dungeons had been duplicated.

“Sounds worth a trip,” Rain mused as she skimmed through Kenzi’s mind for details on Outland and Tempest Keep. ‘Great, it’s a fractured continent floating in the Ethereal Plane and parts of it are dangerously unstable. Yeah, we should probably skip traveling there until we hear from some of the adventurers to make sure it’s at least reasonably stable.’

“If you’re looking for magical items to copy, you might look into visiting one of the moonwells, they’re supposed to hold magic and purify the land around them…” Kenzi trailed off as she realized that Rain might be able to boost the purification quality to an insane degree. “How much could you boost the purifying power of a moonwell?”

Rain skimmed over Kenzi’s knowledge of moonwells. “I’m not sure. It depends on if they count as divine relics or artifacts. Relics are usually just focuses for divine attention, upgrading them generally doesn’t help; a blessed toe of a saint is simply a blessed toe no matter how sparkly I can make it. Artifacts on the other hand are magical items inspired or created by gods that have magical powers, I should be able to upgrade them to a significant degree.”

Velana frowned as she thought about the Dead Scar that cut Silverymoon in half. “You might be able to fix the Dead Scar with a moonwell which would help the blood elves get back on their feet.”

“Dead Scar?” Rain asked as she scanned Velana’s mind, wanting to make sure she wasn’t censoring things because she was a kid. ‘Yuck, how the heck did the Lich King manage to corrupt the land to the point that it can’t be fixed? Guy is a total jerk.’

“The Lich King, or one of his necromancers, cursed the land around the Blood Elf capital when he marched his undead army toward the Sunwell to resurrect his pet lich,” Velana explained, trying not to focus on ‘her’ memories of hiding in a dark room, hoping the undead didn’t find them.

Rain pulled her thoughts back to Velana’s question about duplicating a moonwell. “I’ll have a better idea once I examine a moonwell.”

Kenzi nodded. “We should probably take a portal to the Night Elf capital, Darnassus and take a look at the moonwell and the auction house to see what we can find before taking a portal to Stormwind and flying to Karazhan.”

“Cool. Let me upgrade the rest of your racial abilities then we can grab Lexie and look at the elven city,” Rain said as she opened her upgrade menu and looked at Kenzi’s void related abilities. “I’m going to have to do some research before I poke at your void connection but I should be able to get some of your Blood Elf abilities back without too much trouble or hassle.”

“Just as long as they don’t reignite my magical addiction,” Kenzi said, happy to have every edge she could get but unwilling to curse herself for a couple of extra abilities that weren’t all that great.

“No worries,” Rain replied as she upgraded the traces of Kenzi’s old abilities that weren’t linked to her former dependency on the Sunwell, recovering her Arcane Affinity and Resistance abilities.

Kenzi blinked as she noticed the new abilities appear on her character page. “I thought you couldn’t improve skills?”

“I can’t, talents aren’t skills even if the results can be similar or at least that's how Dad explained things.” Rain jacked Kenzi’s arcane resistance up to 100%, sending out a wave of magic with the sheer amount of mana she had to burn to boost Kenzi’s resistance up to the point of where she was immune to arcane damage. “Your Arcane Torment ability was linked to your addiction so I ignored it. On the plus side, you should be able to gleefully ignore shadow and arcane damage.” She conjured a cookie and handed it to Kenzi. “This should make you immune to fire, cold and lightning damage.”

Kenzi laughed as she looked at the tooltip for the cookie and realized Rain was serious. “You’re the best!”

“I know,” Rain replied smugly as she worked on giving Velana the same upgrades. “With any luck we’ll be able to find something that reduces holy and nature damage by a reasonable amount.”

Kenzi quickly ate her cookie, happy about the new resistances.

“Any chance of picking up a night elf’s resistance to nature damage?” Velana asked hopefully.

Rain shook her head. “Sorry, the split between Night Elves and High Elves was thousands of years ago. I’m good, but I’m not dad. On that note, I’m done upgrading everything until we find additional trinkets, useful spells or interesting potions.”

“Sounds good, let’s grab Lexie then I’ll open a portal to Darnasus,” Kenzi suggested, figuring they could have Dagny summon them back once Bo and Dyson were done having sex.

0o0o0

“Finish the unholy ones, I’ll shall deal with this!” Black Adam ordered as he flew toward the portal the army of demons was spewing out of.

“Don’t…” Myst trailed off as he watched the black and yellow clad cape fly through the demonic portal without a backwards glance. “Do that,” he muttered as the portal closed, either because Black Adam had killed the warlock keeping the portal open or because the warlock had closed the portal intentionally.

“Having problems?” Nightwing asked over the League network.

“No idea, Black Adam went through one of the portals and it closed. That’s either very good because he’ll kill the creatures opening the portals or bad because we don’t have a way to get him back,” Myst explained as he gestured and teleported the ‘small’ demonic army that had made it through the portal into space where their blood couldn’t corrupt anything. “Where to next?”

“I could use some help in Star City!” Oliver said as he shot one of the large demons in the eye with an explosive arrow. “We’re holding the line but the demons won’t stop.”

Myst teleported to Star City, wanting to curse when he saw the hundreds of flying demons that were tossing shadowbolts at random buildings and cars causing lots of property damage. “You call this holding the line?” he demanded as he started teleporting groups of demons into space where one of the ships could kill them.

“I’m doing my best,” Oliver complained as he shot another arrow at a pit lord, only for the pit lord to scream in anger and charge him without looking meaningfully injured. He shot another three arrows then pulled out his sword and charged the massive building sized demon.

Myst scowled as his precog flashed, warning him that a warlock was going to unleash a particularly nasty death curse on the city if he didn’t stop him from coming through the portal. “Damn it, I’m not a hero, I’m suppose to be support staff! If I’m not back in an hour, it might take a day or two,” he said as he worked on teleporting the smaller demons into space.

“Don’t do anything stupid,” Sabrina ordered.

Myst teleported down to the ground and ran the last thirty feet as he hadn’t wanted to teleport too close to the portal. “I have to get the kids anyway. Love you.” He jumped through the portal, knowing he’d get a lecture when he got back. He smiled grimly and pulled his demon slaying sword out of his inventory as he glared at the startled warlock and the army of giant demons gathered in the rocky clearing. A quick glance at the sky filled with twisted ribbons of light and darkness was enough to let him know that he was probably in the Twisting Nether. “Surrender or die!”

One of the warlocks holding open the portal pulled out a knife and stabbed the other warlock holding the portal open in the neck. “For Stormwind!”

Myst glanced at the man that had just killed the other warlock, his illusion of a black robed cultist vanishing to reveal a black haired man in black pants and blue vest over a black shirt. His bracers and duelist hat rather out of place for most cultists. “Nice illusion spell.”

The warlock in charge of the demonic army stared in disbelief as the entire portal collapsed. “Traitor!”

“No, I’m the big fucking hero!” The man with the goatee laughed grandly as he gestured and called down a meteor strike on the middle of the demon army. “For the Horde! Wait, wrong character, for the Alliance!” he shouted as he started to rain fire down on the demons, knowing he was going to have to resurrect at a graveyard.

Myst shook his head then gestured and unleashed rivers of lightning from his hands that ripped into the demonic army, popping the lesser demons like frogs in microwaves and charring everything other than the greater demons. “You picked the wrong world to try and invade.”

0o0o0

“I’m starting to wonder if all of the warlocks are insane,” Lexie grumbled as she copied the Life Tap spell formula from Dagny’s conjured spellbook into her notebook with a wave of her hand.

“Probably,” Dagny admitted, not bothering to look up from Arugal’s research notes that Lexie had let her look through, the first couple of times Lexie had used the copy spell were interesting, after that it was routine. “They’re willing to summon demons and use tainted magic in order to cut corners.”

“That takes a certain amount of insanity,” Lexie agreed as she flipped to the next page. “On the upside, your race is rather solid.”

Dagny said as she set the notes on the worgen transformation down. “Only because you upgraded everything to the point where it was useful, 1% bonus magical damage isn’t all that impressive.”

“No but a 73% bonus damage rocks, same with 100% resistance to arcane and 57% nature damage and the tiny bonuses you had from your race and ancestry gave me something to upgrade.” Lexie took another bite of her mana brownie.

“We should be able to find enough gear to cover the rest.”

“Yeah, I don’t actually have any nature resistance which means I’m basically paying through the nose to boost your nature resistance, arcane is easier as it’s just magic and I’m more or less immune to hostile magic which means it’s easy to boost your arcane resistance.”

“I can’t say I blame you, drinking too much water means you have to piss like a horse,” Dagny teased.

Lexie stuck her tongue out at Dagny. “Of course, my favorite ability is your cantrips ability and I only upgraded the duration.”

“I’m not complaining, I’ll need the formulas for my spells if I’m going to redesign everything to avoid using fel energy.” Dagny turned to look as Kenzi, Velana and Rain walked into the study.

“Is that even possible?” Kenzi asked as she glanced between the scrolls scattered around and Lexie’s spiral notebook.

“If not, I’ll use what I can and ignore the rest,” Dagny replied, hoping she could tweak most of her spells to avoid using fel energy.

“Are you up for summoning us back in an hour or two?” Kenzi asked. “We want to check out a moonwell in Darnassus and the auction house and we don’t want to have to fly back from Dalaran.”

“Sure,” Dagny agreed. “It’s going to take some time to look through all of my spells and figure out which I can use and which I can’t.”

Rain considered offering to make Dagny a paddle that would cleanse corruption but figured there was no point in delaying the trip when they could sort it out once they got back. “Cool, let’s see if we can copy a moonwell.”

Kenzi grinned as she opened a portal to Rut'theran Village, happy that she could actually use real magic and not stolen sparks or enchanted items to fake being fey. “The portal drops you in Rut'theran Village which has a teleporter that takes people to Darnasus. I’ll be right behind you, the portal closes when I step through.”

Lexie pouted as she looked at the portal, fairly sure she was going to have to see the spell a couple of times before she mastered it. “To adventure!” She giggled as she stepped through the portal and looked around the wooded rest stop. The purple and brown buildings were surprisingly open to the air which meant the weather must not be too horrible. She waved at the group of adventurers having a picnic at a stone table then looked at the sailing ship that was being loaded with supplies. “Neat...” she trailed off in surprise as she glanced up and saw the massive world tree.

One of the adventurers laughed. “Yeah, I felt the same way the first time I saw it. It’s one thing to see it in a game, quite another to see it in person.”

“The Dead Scar is much the same,” Velana said, thinking about the twisted blight on the land that cut through her city.

“So you’re a hero?” Rain asked as she glanced between the group of adventurers that were having a picnic and the dozen grim faced elves guarding the glowing violet area that was probably the teleporter to get into the city. ‘One human in plate, one female Blood Elf hunter judging by the bow, two Night Elf casters and a Nightborne caster, odd group.’

“Sir Arthur Shadowbane or just Arthur for short,” the human in platemail said in a kind voice.

Velana glanced at the Blood Elf hunter in the group of adventurers that the guards were keeping an eye on. “Is there a problem with using the portal?”

“No, we’re just making sure we don’t have a problem with undead adventurers trying to kill people. We’re still getting random people logging in and some of the undead players have proven to be a bit insane,” Sin replied, less than happy about the fact that some of the undead players were too caught up in their character’s memories to realize that they weren’t monsters or at least they shouldn’t be. “Which means we’re trading off shifts with some other heroes to make sure none of the idiots cause problems.”

“Mostly we’re just trying to be helpful,” the Nightborne girl spoke up. “I’d rather not get pulled into a war between the Horde and Alliance.”

Sin scowled as she thought about the Forsaken players she’d run into recently. “I don’t have a problem with most of the Horde but I refuse to align myself with the Forsaken considering their attempt at killing everyone with the blight when they should have been fighting the Scourge. Not to mention, I’m fairly sure getting turned into undead rotted their brains.”

“I can’t say I blame you,” Rain said, flashing back to the undead mage’s attempt to kill her. She wasn’t overly bothered because she’d never really been in any danger but he’d been more than a little unhinged. “Hopefully the fighting dies down once people realize they’re not in a game.”

“Did you end up a kid or is that a disguise?” Sin asked, curious about her high amount of mana. “You have way too much magic, unless you’re a dragon or something.” 

“No, we fell through a portal but yeah, we’re from Earth,” Lexie said, not really seeing a problem with being honest.

“Wait, does that mean you’re not immortal?” Sin asked in concern, not wanting the kid to get hurt.

“I’m not planning on testing it, but I doubt it,” Lexie replied as she closed her upgrade menu. “How do the auctions work?”

“They have cards with the item’s information on them. If you win the auctioneer mails you the goods when the auction is over, it keeps people from trying to steal stuff,” Arthur explained.

‘So much for copying stuff without having to buy it,’ Rain mused.

“Anything good up for auction?” Velana asked.

“Mostly jewelry and various crafted goods that are taking up space. Most of the people I know of are hoarding their high end crafting material which isn’t all that surprising considering how difficult replacing some of it is going to be. Of course, we have a lot more freedom in how we craft things, now that we’re not limited by game mechanics. Ironforge has an entire group of adventurers showing the smiths new tricks and they’re playing around with some of the high end metals to see what they can come up with.”

Velana nodded. “Hopefully we can make sure everyone has enough gear to survive taking the battle to the Burning Legion and Scourge.”

“Considering the nearly endless army of demons under their control, we’re going to need all of the help we can get,” Sin said. “Which is why we’re trying to keep the new elves in both camps.”

“Speaking of improving things, has anyone dealt with the furbolgs in the starting area?” Kenzi asked.

“We have a group of druids and rogues stealthing around cleaning out the fel moss,” one of the night elves said. “If that doesn’t work, we’ll have to kill them. Thankfully, they’re rather weak compared to the furbolgs elsewhere or we’d have more of a problem.”

“So, level matters?” Lexie asked.

Sin shrugged. “As far as I know, levels don’t exist but the various monsters are about as dangerous and strong as you’d expect for the various areas.”

“Have you tested any of the dungeons?” Rain asked, curious how hard the dungeons were.

“Just the Stockades in Stormwind. It’s laughably easy and the loot is sh-” Arthur glanced at the kids, “crap. Of course, it also spits out the occasional thug. Thankfully the guards can toss the bodies back into the dungeon or they’d likely end up filling up graveyards.”

Rain winced. “If the monsters can come out of the dungeon, that could be a problem.”

“There’s a decent chance that it’s limited to the stockades, considering that’s the only dungeon I remember actually spitting out mobs but yeah, it’s something to look into,” Sin admitted.

“On that note, we should check on the moonwell in the temple before we take a portal to Stormwind and do a test run for the munchkins.” Kenzi figured they’d be fine but wanted to at least go over some of the basics before they got near Karazhan.

“Best of luck. I’d take a look at one of the other moonwells, the priests are a bit twitchy with everything going on,” the previously quiet Night Elf suggested.

“That’s fine, we’ll use the moonwell in the tree,” Velana said as she turned and headed toward the teleporter.

The leader of the group of guards glanced between over the group then stepped to the side. “Enjoy your stay, please don’t dance in any of the fountains.”

Kenzi smiled as she remembered dancing in the Stormwind fountain on more than one occasion while shouting about her enchanting services. “Of course not.”

Lexie looked at the teleporter with her upgrade ability. ‘They really need to put some safeguards on the teleporter or at least toss up some wards against the undead.’ She walked into the purple mist that filled the gazebo and out into a beautiful forested area with an ancient looking stone temple on the other side of a pond. She giggled as she spun and looked at the stonework and pathways as well as the various wooden structures nestled between trees or branches of the world tree they were in. “I can feel magic everywhere, so many things to copy.”

Rain smiled as she watched a group of Night Elf children running around, playing tag or something similar. ‘We’re going to have to get a seed so we can make our own world tree,’ she sent the idea to her sister as she headed toward the well of magical energy that she could feel. “This way, I think.”

“Good senses,” Kenzi said as she led the way toward a hollowed out yet still living tree or branch of the world tree with several small streams of water flowing down the trunk into a shimmering pool. She walked over the stone stepping stones and into the area were several worgen were discussing recent events. She gestured toward the moonwell off to the left of the group of hollowed out area.

Velana nodded toward the worgen as she walked in the sheltered area. “The game doesn’t really do the city justice.”

Lexie grinned when she looked at the moonwell with her upgrade ability and realized that it wasn’t a divine relic, it was a druidic artifact that purified the surrounding area and infused the water in the pool with magic as long as it didn’t get corrupted. “We’ll probably need the help of a druid or a shaman or maybe just a lot of things with ties to nature if we don’t want things to end up causing problems with a knock-off well, but I should be able to boost the purification ability. Of course, we’ll probably have to feed it a decent amount of magic if we want to deal with the Dead Scar in a reasonable timeframe but it should be possible.”

Rain pulled a glass vial out of her inventory then knelt down and took a sample of the water so that they could make a moonwell to cleanse the corrupted area. “It’s worth a shot.”

“In that case, let’s see what we can find in the auction house then we can take a portal to Stormwind. Hopefully some of the adventurers have dealt with the Worgen in Darkshire,” Velana said as she turned and headed back outside.