Travels in the Multiverse Part 13 (Patreon)

Dawn glanced away from the window that gave her a wonderful view of Miranda and looked over at Myst as he walked over to where she was sitting. "Did you manage to catch any sleep?"

"A couple hours," Myst admitted as he flopped down in the chair across from Dawn, feeling more than a little worn out thanks to the sheer number of rituals he'd finished as well his less than stellar discussion about letting his housemates think he was dead when he'd jumped back to Earth to pick up the Buffy and Harry Potter DVDs.

“That’s it?” Dawn asked, wondering what else he’d been up to.

“My quick trip home to leave a note for my housemates so they wouldn’t wonder if I’d been eaten by a grue, pick up some DVDs and set up a couple of chapters to auto-update while I’m on vacation turned into a much longer trip and than was expecting,” Myst replied as he closed his eyes and relaxed.

“Let me guess, you didn’t manage to leave the note before they saw you?” Dawn asked with amusement.

“Alas, not so much," Myst replied with a grin. "On the upside, the food was good. How are you doing?”

“Honestly?” Dawn asked, not sure he actually wanted to hear her problems.

"I've got time and I could use a break from dealing with Kaylee and Willow," Myst admitted.

"What's wrong with Kaylee?" Dawn asked, knowing Willow could get carried away.

Myst opened his eyes. "I gave them access to one of the industrial replicators and the scans of the Reaver ships. It's like listening to listening to a group of bleeding edge tech monkeys chatting about their latest project when you've only got a vague idea what they're talking about."

Dawn laughed. "You should see her with coffee."

"No thanks," Myst replied with amusement.

"Now that you don't have to worry about an insane traveler ambushing you, are you going to take the rest of us exploring?" Dawn asked hopefully.

"If you could go anywhere, where would you go?" Myst asked.

"If you'd asked me that before I knew about the replicator or your completely unfair ability to create gems I would have said Goonies so we could loot a pirate ship but that seems a touch pointless when we can just replicate gold and conjure gems. How about somewhere we can get some trustworthy magical items that aren't cursed?" Dawn asked thoughtfully.

"It's worth a look," Myst agreed as he focused on jumping and magical items.

"Cool," Dawn said excitedly.

"Hmm, not going there," Myst muttered when his precog showed him a vision of a familiar looking man that was missing half the flesh on his face, revealing a glowing red eye and metal bones.

"Going where?" Dawn asked.

"Terminator, I don't trust the timeline," Myst replied as he focused on magic and tried again, wanting nothing to do with the death world. He twitched when he caught an image that looked like a familiar Hobbit falling to his death towards an equally familiar pit of lava. "Shit. BBS!"

"What?" Dawn blurted.

He hesitated briefly then made the jump when his precog didn't scream at him about being burned alive. He reached out and grabbed the hobbit with telekinesis before he got close enough to catch fire and quickly hauled him up, trying to ignore the heat washing over everything like an open furnace.

"My Precious!" Gollum shouted from where he was hanging from the stone ledge Myst was standing on.

Myst looked down at Gollum and scanned his surface thoughts, not surprised in the least to find his mind broken by greed and desire for The Ring but a bit surprised that he hadn't realized Frodo had fallen off the ledge with the ring. "You realize it's gone, right? It fell into the lava…" he trailed off as Gollum let go and dropped like a stone towards the lava.

"Oops?" he muttered as he levitated Frodo up to the ledge.

"Thank you, can we get out of here?" Frodo asked hopefully, looking more than a little feverish.

"You realize there are other magical trinkets, right?" Myst asked as he pulled The Ring off the hobbit's finger and over to his hand while holding him in place.

"It's mine, you can't have it!" Frodo snapped as he frantically grabbed for The Ring, struggling against the invisible hands holding him in place. "Give it back!"

"I shall become the God King of the World!" He waited a couple of seconds then tried to stick The Ring in his inventory, not particularly surprised that it resisted the attempt. 'So much for seeing if I could kill the bastard by taking it out of the world and ripping his soul apart.' He looked at The Ring with his Infer ability, curious what he could learn. 'Enough magic to fuel an entire world, it'd be a shame to let it go to waste.'

He briefly evaluated his mental health. 'I should be immune to anything screwing with my head and a fraction of enough magic to power a world means I won't have to devour an endless stream of dementors.' He ignored Frodo's ranting as he studied the swirling magic running through The Ring for half a minute, trying to learn the barest hint of how The Ring worked before he realized he was delaying things because he didn't want to destroy it and lose out on the magic.

"My Precious!" Frodo ranted as he clawed at the air.

Myst glanced at Frodo and sighed. "On the other hand, never eat an energy field larger than your head." He tossed The Ring off the ledge, smiling when he felt the profound shock and despair coming from The Ring as it dropped towards the lava.

"No!" Frodo shouted, feeling like he was losing a piece of his soul.

Myst floated Frodo into the air and flew towards the exit, knowing they only had a couple of seconds to find Sam before the volcano started erupting. He sighed in relief when he saw the unconscious gardener slumped by the entrance unconscious but still breathing. He scooped him up with telekinesis and flew out of the mountain, carrying both hobbits in front of him knowing his shield would help against stray rocks but not against the lava that would be tossed into the air. He laughed a bit hysterically as his precog flashed, letting him know that he needed to speed things up.

He pulled the hobbits closer then teleported over the distant battle and watched the volcano explode, trusting his shield and distance to deal with the shockwave. "Such a waste," he muttered as he flew down towards the ground, a bit annoyed that he hadn't had more time to study The Ring but fairly sure he'd made the right choice.

He grinned as he spotted one of the ringwraiths fighting a group of soldiers stumble and start screaming. "Consolation prize," he said cheerfully as he used telekinesis to rip the undead monster apart and claim his hand and ring. 'Not quite the same but without Sauron, it's probably safe to study as long as I never wear it and don't let anyone near it that doesn't have mental defenses.'

He ignored Frodo's insane mumbling about how it was over and The Ring was gone as he stuffed the hand and ring into his inventory and flew over towards where Gandalf was tossing blasts of fire at the orc like monsters.

Gandalf stared at Myst and the hobbits in disbelief.

"You lost some hobbits, I'm returning them," Myst told Gandalf as he gently set Sam and Frodo down next to the wizard, enjoying the shocked look far more than he should. "Now if you'll excuse me, a wizard is never late but sometimes, he has to make haste." He focused on jumping and jumped worlds when he saw a man wearing black robes in a cave about to stab a woman tied to a stone altar.

Myst ignored the mage's glowing robe as he used his telekinesis to pull the knife out of his grasp then used his suppression ability on the cultist to lock down his magic.

The necromancer spun around. "You dare interrupt me?!"

Myst glanced around to make sure there weren't any other cultists around then focused on the angry man holding a black palm sized crystal. He glanced at the man's glowing circlet then at his rings which were also glowing then focused on the creepy skull printed on the man's robes for a second before focusing on his eyes. "Just to be clear why were you going to sacrifice the woman?"

"He's a necromancer! Help!" the woman shouted frantically.

Myst started laughing as he read the necromancer's surface thoughts and realized where he was or at least the world. "Ah, you were filling your soul gem." He glanced over at the ornate glowing table in the corner of the cave then back at the man in robes. "Were you planning on making something interesting?" he asked, slightly disappointed when he realized the necromancer was just going to recharge his staff.

"Of course," the necromancer lied.

Myst grinned as he caught the man's thoughts about the enchanter his group had kidnapped that handled the group's actual enchanting. "That's unfortunate," he pulled his crystal wand out of his pocket and hit the necromancer with a stunner, holding him in place with telekinesis so he couldn't dodge, "for you."

"Can I get some help, please?" the woman asked hopefully.

"Sure." Myst walked over and stuffed the unconscious necromancer into his pocket dimension then untied the woman with telekinesis. "Where's home and why were you here?"

"The bard college, the necromancers grabbed me while I was out for a walk," she lied as she sat up and rubbed her wrists.

Myst briefly considered knocking her out and draining her magic for being stupid enough to try to sell a fellow student's flute to necromancers but needing money to continue your studies wasn't a crime worthy of death as far as he was concerned, even if making a deal with untrustworthy and dangerous lunatics demonstrated an appalling lack of common sense. "What made you decide to sell the flute to necromancers?"

"I…" she gulped as she noticed his expression harden, "I needed the gold to continue studying," she admitted reluctantly.

"There are better ways to make money, hit the taverns and toss out a hat," he suggested as he walked over to the glowing table in the corner and pushed it into his pocket dimension, glad that he'd taken the time to expand it. "Either way, I'm sure he's got something worth selling so you can return the flute."

The woman nodded. "Thank you!"

Myst checked his precog to make sure the chest wasn't trapped then opened it and looked at the various small soul stones and books stacked inside next to a rather nice looking silver flute. He closed the chest then stuck it in his pocket dimension.

"Shit!" the woman cursed as she saw five necromancers holding staffs and a dozen zombies walk out of the tunnel like they owned the place.

The old man in front of the group frowned. "You're not the Dragonborn, why are you here?"

Myst glanced at the various bits of glowing jewelry and weapons the necromancers were carrying and realized that he was going to have a hell of a time disabling everyone without killing them or getting injured. He activated his area suppression field then charged the necromancers as the undead collapsed like puppets with their strings cut.

Myst cracked a smile as two of the necromancers tried blasting him with their staffs and nothing happened, causing them to look at their staffs in disbelief and giving him enough time to close the distance. He jumped, twisted in the air and hit the lead mage with a flying side kick, breaking several of the old man's ribs and causing him to drop his staff. He lunged forward and punched the second necromancer in the throat, dropping him to the group and causing him to gasp for air.

"Kill him!" one of the necromancers shouted as he took a wild swing at Myst.

Myst pulled his head backwards and tossed the fallen staff up with his foot and caught it out of the air, a touch surprised that he'd managed to pull the trick off considering he hadn't practiced it for years.

Myst laughed as he easily blocked a wild swing then hit the man in the nuts with the bottom end of his stolen staff then kicked the bent over man as hard as he could in the face then blocked another swing. He slipped past the staggering necromancer and cracked the next guy in the ribs. He pulled his wand when the last guy bolted, dropped his suppression field and blasted him in the back then turned his attention to the rest of the necromancers, hitting them with stunners.

"What was that?!" the woman sputtered as she stared at Myst in disbelief.

Myst finished hitting the last necromancer then checked the zombies to make sure they weren't getting back up. He glanced down the poorly lit tunnel then started stuffing the unconscious necromancers into his pocket dimension. "Most magic users don't practice hitting people with weapons, I'm just glad they didn't know how to fight."

"How did you drop the zombies?" she asked, trying to figure out how he'd taken out a dozen zombies without any sign of casting a spell.

Myst ignored the question as he finished collecting the necromancers and their staffs then headed down the tunnel.

"The entrance is the other way!" the woman shouted, wondering why he was going the wrong way.

"And the loot is this way," Myst replied as he continued walking, the thought of all of the magical items he could acquire making him willing to ignore the woman's screaming. 'If things work like the game, this might be a good place to pick up magic resistance gear. Damage reflection? Water breathing or walking would be nice. Of course, I'll probably need to figure out a way to power the enchantments without using souls if I don't want Buffy and Tara to freak out.'

"I'm telling you, something went wrong," a deep voice complained from further down the tunnel, causing Myst to pause and turn invisible.

'I really need to take some time and actually practice my magic, that fight would have been a lot easier if I'd just knocked them out before they realized I was there or spun them with telekinesis,' Myst mused as he snuck down the tunnel.

"It's just the idiot screaming. We're supposed to be watching the enchanter to make sure she doesn't do anything stupid," a whiny voice argued.

Myst frowned slightly as he walked into the small chamber and noticed the glowing alchemy table next to the cage built into the wall that held a weather-worn old woman in an old brown robe with hints of red left in her wild grey hair. 'Score.'

"I'm not going to do anything stupid," the woman snapped scornfully as she pointed at her shackles. "I'm old, even without the shackles, running isn't a viable option."

"You're just saying that Irene," the taller man said scornfully, knowing she was in decent shape for a woman his grandmother's age.

Myst snuck up behind the short thin elf and blasted him in the back with a stunner then hit the taller man with blonde hair as he turned to look at his fallen 'friend.' He glanced around the chamber filled with rough wooden tables and alchemy supplies then dropped his invisibility.

"Can you grab the keys?" the old woman asked.

"Better," Myst replied as he ripped the door off its hinges with telekinesis. "I don't suppose you'd be willing to help with a couple of enchanting projects?"

"Does that mean the rest of the necromancers are dead?" she asked as she stared at the damaged hinges.

"No idea," Myst admitted as he stuffed the two necromancers into his pocket dimension, causing the old woman to stare at him. "I teleported into the chamber with the altar so I might have missed some."

"How many did you get?" she asked as she walked out of the cage, being careful not to trip on her shackles, curious how he was causing the bodies to vanish.

"Counting these two, eight," Myst replied as he walked over to the alchemy table and shoved it into his pocket dimension.

"In that case, you missed three of them." The old woman frowned at the empty space where the table had been. "What did you do with the alchemy table?"

"I teleported it back to my lab," Myst replied as he glanced over the alchemy supplies, recognizing some of them from the game but not the rest of them. "I'm going to have to find an alchemy book."

"So much for getting the keys for the shackles," she muttered.

"Give me a second and I'll deal with the shackles," Myst replied as he walked over and knelt down a couple of feet away from the old woman. "I just need to touch them."

The woman stepped forward. "Be my guest."

Myst reached out and moved the glowing shackles into his inventory, wanting to study the enchantment later. "Do you want the alchemy supplies or should I take them?"

The old woman laughed. "Keep them, none of them are particularly valuable and I appreciate the help."

"Enough for a couple of enchanting and alchemy lessons?" Myst asked hopefully.

"I'll even give you a couple of my old books once we're back to town," the woman assured him as she worked on packing the ingredients into bags, naming some of the more exotic plants as she carefully packed them away.

Myst grinned as he caught an image of the old woman's house in her mind. 'That should make it easy to drop them off then swing back and grab the other three necromancers before picking up the girls and hitting the shops for magic items.'

0o0o0

Dawn looked up when she felt a ripple in the air and smiled when Myst reappeared near the window looking none the worse for his trip. "Trouble?"

Myst turned to look at Dawn and shook his head when he noticed that she was playing bartender for Tara, Xander, Willow and Ivy while wearing her genie outfit. "Just a bit, I had to save Frodo Baggins from falling into a volcano then I jumped to Skyrim and saved a woman from being sacrificed by cultists."

"Frodo Baggins, as in Lord of the Rings?" Willow asked excitedly.

"Yeah, Gollum managed to push him off the ledge," Myst replied as he walked over.

"What happened to The One Ring?" Tara asked, hoping he hadn't walked off with it.

Myst smiled at Tara. "Don't worry, after careful consideration of my available anti-corruption resources, I tossed it in the lava."

"Good," Tara agreed, fairly sure trying to steal a god of corruption's power would end in nightmare fuel.

"Probably for the best considering what happened to the Nazgul," Willow admitted, looking like someone had just kicked a puppy in front of her despite her best efforts. "Where's Skyrim?" she asked, trying to change the subject.

"Nirn," Myst replied smugly.

"Like Daggerfall and Arena?" Xander asked excitedly, thinking about the game they used to play at Jesse's before he'd gotten killed.

"There's some differences but yeah, more or less," Myst replied with a grin.

"What's Daggerfall or Arena?" Ivy asked, having no idea about either one.

"Arena is a hack and slash fantasy video game with a lot of random elements where you can explore a continent on the fictional world of Nirn. It didn't have the best graphics and the world wasn't all that fleshed out, being that the towns and dungeons were randomly generated but it was interesting," Xander explained.

"Where as Daggerfall was a lot more fleshed out and focused on one country of the same world. It had a lot of glitchy quests but it was a blast back in the day. The next game was Morrowind which was all things considered an improvement and focused on a different country. You could fly around and set teleport points and do some fun things that caused some problems with quests which led to the next game getting rid of levitation and mark and recall, it was rather annoying really."

"Why would they do that?" Xander asked.

"They put in a fast travel system and the people supposedly lost the spells, which is a load of shit as far as I'm concerned. As far as I can tell, they just didn't want to solve some of the issues that being able to teleport caused their quests or maybe they were just lazy. Either way, Enchanting got hit with a nerf bat which made it less useful, probably because they wanted to introduce demonic magic stones to 'enchant' your weapons which were more powerful than you could make yourself."

"Corruption?" Tara asked, wondering how close the game was to the world Myst had found.

"They didn't deal with it as a game mechanic but there were various cursed items that drove people insane in the lore so I'd just assume avoid anything that sounds like it should be madness inducing," Myst replied. "Thankfully from the quick lesson Irene gave me for saving her, the enchanting system seems to be a combination of Daggerfall and Skyrim where you can channel vast amounts of magic into the item, give an item drawbacks and or use soul gems."

"Soul gems? Is that as bad as it sounds?" Ivy asked warily, wondering if it was as bad as it sounded.

"You can use monster souls, but yeah basically you can trap souls in special gems and use them to power your magical items. Thankfully, we should have plenty of mana so we can avoid using souls which is good because the only souls I'd be willing to use are demonic and I'd rather avoid any trouble with corruption," Myst assured them.

"Good," Tara said, glad the matter was settled.

"How do you learn enchantments, books?" Ivy asked.

"That or by breaking magical items on an enchanting table," Myst explained.

"What are we waiting for?" Dawn asked excitedly.

Myst shook his head. "I'm not taking you to a monster filled world without your sister's permission, I'd rather not give her a reason to freak out."

"But you'll let Ivy come without complaint?" Dawn asked, looking at Ivy.

Myst grinned at Ivy then looked back at Dawn. "Did you forget that she killed a giant sixty foot long basilisk with a sword when she was twelve?"

"Fair point," Dawn admitted, fairly sure that would be hard to top.

"Does taking out a giant demonic snake count?" Xander asked.

Dawn glanced at Xander. "Didn't Giles push the button on that?"

"Guess who made and set the charges," Xander replied with a touch of sarcasm. "I also misappropriated the rocket launcher to deal with the Judge."

"Cordelia helped," Willow added.

Xander nodded. "More than anyone gave her credit for."

"We should probably check in on her at some point," Myst suggested, knowing that she could use regeneration to help deal with her visions and some metal wards to keep Jasmine from screwing her over, not to mention avoid the entire high power bit which wasn't anyone's idea of fun.

"Probably a good idea," Xander agreed.

"How safe are the towns?" Willow asked, excited about picking up some decent combat magic.

Myst shrugged. "As long as the dragons aren't attacking, the guards should be able to handle everything."

"Great," Dawn muttered as the door opened and Buffy walked into the lounge, "in other words, she's not letting me go."

Myst winked at Buffy. "It's not like you have to tell her about the dragons."

Dawn laughed at Myst. "She'd find out," she paused as she noticed Myst was looking past her, "and she's behind me, isn't she?"

"Yes, yes I am," Buffy said as she walked over. "What's this about dragons?" she asked, glancing between her sister and Myst.

"I found a world where we can probably pick up some magical items," Myst replied.

"Where do dragons come into it?" Buffy asked.

"The world is similar to a computer game and dragons exist in the game. That's not proof that they exist in the world I found but I'm not ruling it out considering the enchanter admitted they used to exist when I asked. They generally don't bother people but occasionally someone puts be stupid on their list of things to do," Myst explained.

"In other words, no point worrying about it. When do we go?" Buffy asked cheerfully, looking forward to picking up some magical gear.

"As soon as we grab some decent winter clothes and some snacks," Myst said, seeing no reason to trust the food or water quality and knowing the girls would freeze without decent winter gear.