Dungeon Myst Part 16 (Patreon)

The dust made Harry feel better about slipping into the room, mostly because it was obvious that no one had visited for a long time. He glanced at the dust covered bed that was perfectly made then at the small kitchen and the door to a more modest bathroom then focused on the glass coffin with a girl in it. He walked over and picked up the old fashioned postcard that was leaned up against the coffin. 'In case of emergency, say Avalon and kiss the princess awake?'

Harry briefly considered leaving things alone before he got a decent look at the girl in an old fashioned dress and realized she was the girl from the tutorial that he'd rescued from an animated stuffed bear. He opened his mouth to say Avalon then closed it as he realized the dust would have to do somewhere. He walked over and grabbed the old towel that was on the oven and ran some water on it then stared when he realized the water worked and wasn't the least bit rusty. "Huh, there's no way that's normal."

He turned the water off then walked over and grabbed a chair from the table and dragged it over so he could wipe the top of the coffin off. He finished wiping the coffin off then tossed the filthy rag in the sink. "Avalon…" he trailed off as the glass coffin vanished, leaving the pale skinned teenage girl lying on a blue velvet cushion. 'She looks dead but I could say the same thing about Snow White and I know magic is real.'

He leaned down and kissed the girl on her forehead then jumped back with the girl sat up with a gasp. "Hello?"

The dark haired girl blinked a couple of times then glanced around the room and focused on Harry. "Harry?" she asked, sounding uncertain but hopeful and like she'd just woken up from a nap and wasn't quite all there.

"Yes?" Harry asked, surprised that she knew his name since he'd never seen her outside of the tutorial.

"I had the weirdest dream of being stuck in a basement with a stuffed bear and you rescued me," she admitted.

"And you taught me how to conjure t-shirts," Harry replied with a grin.

The girl stared at Harry for a couple of seconds then smiled as she realized she was actually awake. "I'm guessing the runes that were supposed to attract someone that could help connected our dreams. How did you find the place?"

Harry gestured back the way he'd come. "I live in the cupboard under the stairs in number four."

"Huh, someone must have put that in after I went to sleep, how long was I sleeping?" she asked.

"It's July 1st 1991, what year did you go to sleep?" Harry asked.

"July 1st, 1941, fifty years," the girl grumbled. "Please tell me we won The War?"

"England won," Harry replied, fairly sure she was talking about the second world war given the timeframe.

"That's a relief, my German is horrible," she admitted as she swung her legs around so they were hanging off the edge of the platform she was sitting on.

"Does that mean you're sixty?" Harry asked.

"You're not supposed to ask a lady her age," she teased then shrugged. "I was born in 1925 and I spent fifty years in stasis so I'm sixty five or fifteen depending on how you look at it and I'm a girl which means I'm fifteen, at least until some idiot starts talking about sticking me with a guardian or something, then I was born in 1925 and they can fuck right off."

"What happened and can I get a name? I sort of forgot to ask when I saved you in the tutorial," Harry reminded her.

"Ah, right, I'm Sarah Granger. My family put me in stasis because there were a lot of crazy wizards running around during the war and a seer made an annoying prediction that I'd die if I stayed in Britain during the war and go insane if I left the isles, so we had to get creative."

"Skipping the entire problem makes sense," Harry agreed.

"Exactly." Sarah hopped down from her pedestal and walked over to the tapestry that was hanging on the wall. "Hmm, dead, dead… married Hector Dagworth, oh Richard married a girl named Helen and had a couple of children without magic, their daughter has magic."

"Huh?" Harry asked.

"It's a magical tapestry, it tracks the family going back five hundred years," Sarah explained as she memorized the names. "Now I just have to figure out how to track them down."

"You could use the phonebook," Harry suggested.

Sarah turned and looked at Harry. "Let me guess, phones became more popular?"

"You could say that. Most homes have phones these days," Harry said, wondering if he could find a history book in the library that would cover the last fifty years.

"Televisions?" Sarah asked hopefully.

"They're even in color," Harry replied.

"Neat!" Sarah squealed then coughed. "Ignore that."

"Ignore what?" Harry asked with a smile.

"Exactly," Sarah replied as she pulled her wand out of the holster on her left arm and waved it around the room, banishing most of the dust in the room. "That's better."

"Wicked!" Harry exclaimed. "Can you teach me that spell?" he asked hopefully.

"You'd need a wand," Sarah mused. "Is Diagon Alley still standing?"

"Where?" Harry asked.

"Maybe they destroyed it in the war," Sarah mused as she put her wand back in its holster.

"I only found out about magic when I got summoned into a weird tutorial, so it might be there," Harry offered.

“Summoned? Tutorial?”

“I think it had something to do with the Fae or an entity beyond the bounds of time and space,” Harry said with a shrug.

“Oh, sometimes it’s best not to look too closely at things like that,” she suggested. “Can you catch me up on some of what I missed? I need to know at least a little before going topside.”

Harry nodded. “Germany lost, we won, people are people, most wars are done through charging more for your stuff these days. We’ve had a load of idiots as Prime Minister.”

“The Queen?”

“Still Queen Elizabeth,” he said, “pretty sure she and her corgis are immortal.”

“At least that’s one point of stability,” she said.

“Yeah, history repeats, or maybe if you don’t study history you have to repeat it, and most people don’t,” Harry replied. “Let me catch you up on the stuff that’s been invented…”

0o0o0

'Cyclopean Manawarp Barracks completed,' the voice announced.

Myst glanced away from the line of frost iron trees that he'd planted on the edge of his main platform and opened his new barracks menu. "Five slots for instructors for the training options, three alchemist slots under the option to drug minions and one ritualist slot under the ritual button."

"Do you actually have any minions with ritual skills?" Jessica asked as she walked out of the bathroom with a towel wrapped around her head to keep her hair from dripping on the carpet.

"Let me check." Myst tapped the empty frame for the ritualist and looked over the list of minions that appeared. "I'm guessing the ritual to turn people into magic users has been giving some of the students points in their Ritual skill."

"What type of rituals can you pull off?" she asked.

Myst tapped the ritual button and read the description for the grayed out ritual, "Ritually gouging out one of the target's eyes grants the target the ability to see spirits or invisible creatures with their remaining eye(s), random chance of getting either ability."

She winced as she thought about going through the ritual and having one of her eyes gouged out. "You're not planning on using that on me, are you?"

Myst glanced at his host's twin, noticing that she'd picked a name while she was in the shower since it was floating over her health bar above her head. "Not unless you volunteer and we figure out a way to regenerate eyes and pick up a decent amount of pain medication."

"Who are you planning on using it on?" she asked as she sat down on the edge of the table.

"Gremlins," Myst replied as he went back and selected the gremlin with the highest ritual skill, wishing there was an option for researching more rituals. He assigned one of the gremlins as a test subject then pushed the button, causing a progress bar to appear over the ritual button. "If the ritual gives them an ability, we might be able to breed the ability into the population."

"Does that mean you're going to use the ritual on your host?" she asked.

"Probably…" Myst trailed off when a video clip started playing on his HUD, showing a gremlin being strapped to a chair and another gremlin walking over with a rusty spoon. "Shit…" he trailed off as the victim slipped out of the restraints, grabbed the spoon and removed the ritualist's left eye before doing a rather weird dance that looked like he was being electrocuted. He sighed as the one eyed gremlin jumped the other and proceeded to rip his eye out before the video stopped playing.

"What happened?" she asked.

"The victim flipped the ritual on the ritualist…" Myst trailed off when the voice announced, "For doing unlicensed surgery, you've unlocked the Barber's Shop."

'Huh,' Myst mused as he pulled up the pattern for the new shop. "I just unlocked a barber shop, a place to get your haircut, limbs removed and teeth pulled.”

Jessica winced. "That sounds insane and barbaric."

"I'm hoping I can upgrade it to an actual infirmary at some point," he replied as he added stone and agate then tossed as much tainted wood as he had into the box and hit the button. He placed the shop near the lumber mill and assigned his construction team to build it.

"Did the ritual actually work?" Jessica asked.

Myst pulled up his minion list and looked at his two one eyed minions. "Huh, they both managed to complete the ritual, one of them picked up the ability to see invisible objects out of his right eye and the other one got ghost sight out of his left. They're listed under abilities and not as temporary abilities which means there's a good chance that my crazy idea will actually work."

"Cool," Jessica replied. "I'm still not letting them rip my eyes out."

"I don't blame you," Myst replied with amusement as he assigned the ritualist to take the gremlin's other eye. 'At least most of the gremlins are evil little shits.' He watched the new clip that popped up and sighed when he ended up with two blind gremlins because the restraints broke. "We're going to have to work on the ritual and the restraints."

"Have you tried assigning the trainers?" Jessica asked, wondering if they'd help keep things under control with the ritual.

"Good point," Myst admitted as he assigned the undead knight to one of the training slots. "This would be a lot easier if I could just hire trainers."

"Just a bit," Jessica agreed. "Speaking of trainers, can you assign me to combat training or classes at the school?"

"Sure," Myst replied as he assigned her to pick up basic weapon training then added her to the list of magic students. "That should let you unlock all of the basic weapons and pick up classes at the school."

"Thanks!" Jessica replied cheerfully then left in a rush, eager to work on her combat skills.

"Best of luck." Myst glanced at the resource list then looked at the list of structures he could build. 'I'm not sure I need a tower but it might unlock something and I have more stone than I know what to do with.'

'One problem at a time,' Myst told himself as he assigned Vivian to make twins of the blind gremlins. He smiled when a green checkmark appeared in the box next to her name, letting him know that she'd noticed the order and approved. 'That makes things easier.'

He closed his minion menu and selected the tower pattern. 'Four squares and I can upgrade the tower to a ballista tower if I get the right patterns, nice.' He flew out of the window and over to the edge of the platform to the left of the side that connected to his magic school. 'Might as well expand a bit since I need to spend mana.'

Myst placed two twenty foot squares of float stone connected by a ten foot by five foot wide stone bridge about thirty feet away from his main platform then created a float stone bridge when the system complained that his structure needed to be connected to the main platform.

"That should work," he muttered as he spent the mana to place the float stone, creating the platform and a carved stone bridge that looked wide enough to drive a cart over. He quickly devoured the slime that his curse created then read the notices that popped up, "Life draining stone (mundane) unlocked. Phase stone (magic) unlocked? Transport Stone unlocked? Safe stone unlocked?"

Myst pulled up the new types of stone that he could create and looked at the description for the transport stone. 'They move anything touching it in a set direction and I can change the speed depending on how much mana I pay, that's nice.' He glanced over the rest of the new types of stone he could create. 'Safe stone prevents falling damage if you land on it. Phase stone basically isn't there if you're a magic user which means I can probably make a bunch of secret passages using it. The life-draining stone deals damage if you're close and you're not a magic user, nice.'

'I could make a fantastic mage quarter with those.' Myst opened his character sheet and checked to see if he'd received a luck buff when he wasn't paying attention then closed his sheet when he didn't see anything new. 'I'm not complaining,' he mused as he scrolled through the various tower designs until he found a tower that was connected to a wall and had a metal door in the back of it. He flipped the design so the 'walls' sticking out of the towers could be turned into a portcullis with a bit of work or stone shaping then assigned the students to build them and hit the button, causing foundations to appear on the platform.

Myst spent a minute looking at the stone until he found the section of the bridge that was made of phase stone. He marked the bridge as off limits for his minions then opened his school menu and built another teacher's room, using Frost Iron Wood and agate. 'Winter Bedroom of Sin: The teacher assigned to this ice and snow themed room occasionally lures students to their bedroom for private instruction, resulting in the student gaining experience in a random magical skill the teacher possesses and decreasing their stress level. Five percent chance for the student to permanently increase their frost resistance by five percent and a three percent chance to acquire the cold affinity each visit?'

Myst selected the pattern for the Winter Bedroom of Sin and tossed the materials into the box then hit the button. 'Frost Touched Bedroom of Sin. Lures students, increases ice themed magic, twenty percent chance of picking up a cold related derangement and suffering from severe frostbite which results in lost appendages? I'm not sure doubling the chance of picking up or increasing your cold affinity and cold resistance each visit is worth the health risk but it's probably worth it for the gremlins, especially since there are ways to get rid of derangements.'

'I'm going to need a different school for the catgirls,' Myst thought as he looked at the pattern for the Frost Touched Bedroom of Sin. 'Frost Iron Wood, high quality stone and a cold related magical item or resource.'

'Probably worth making another resource node,' Myst mused as he focused on some of the mist crystals in his storage and cast his Conjure Resource Node spell, draining his mana pool and creating a foil card with an outcropping of a dark purple crystal on it. He devoured the slime then examined his new card. 'Shadow Crystal, this crystal is linked to the shadow realm and is useful in creating certain shadow related structures and items.'

'Not the worst description I've seen.' He focused on the empty area near the smelter and used the card, creating a four foot tall outcropping of a dark purple crystal in front of the building. He flew over to the node and spent a minute studying the crystals, watching as they slowly changed color, going from a dark purple to a blue that was almost black before changing back to a dark purple. 'Let's see what we can make,' he mused as he assigned his miners to mine the crystal node.

Vivian walked over holding two blind gremlins by their feet. "What do you want me to do with the blind gremlins now that they have twins?"

Myst closed his menus and pulled up his minion list and sorted it by new minions. "Cool, the gremlin twins have the upgraded abilities and they're not missing their eyes." He used his magic extraction spell on the annoying gremlin, causing him to drop dead and creating a magic granting crystal and a slime. He quickly devoured the slime then frowned when he noticed how much of his host's arm the mana scales were covering. "I should probably have the ritualist gouge my host's eyes out so you can make another twin since I'm getting close to the point where my host is going to explode."

"You could always swap to something else until the curse breaks," Vivian pointed out.

"I thought about it but the twins are going to be important moving forward so I might as well start things off with a boost," Myst said as he started walking towards the barracks. "Besides, I'm curious if my host will regenerate once I take the transformation item off."

"Worth a try," Vivian agreed.

0o0o0

"Why do you have a girl with you?" Petunia demanded as Harry and a dark haired girl walked out of the cupboard under the stairs.

"Magic," Harry replied as he walked over to the phone book.

Petunia glanced at the clock. "Vernon is going to be home in twenty minutes, give me the short version."

"I found a secret door that leads to a hidden bedroom, she was sleeping in an enchanted coffin, I woke her up," Harry explained as he opened the phonebook and started looking for Sarah's family.

"Why were you in the basement and how long were you down there?" Petunia asked Sarah.

"Fifty years," Sarah replied absently as she glanced around the living room, surprised by the size of the television and the clock hanging on the wall. "My family owns the mineral rights and the underground to this whole area."

"You're a witch, aren't you?" Petunia asked warily.

"Yes," Sarah replied as the door opened and Vernon walked in.

Petunia turned to look at Vernon, surprised that he'd gotten home early or that she hadn't heard him shut the car door.

Vernon stared at the girl wearing an old fashioned dress that was standing in the living room then focused on Harry who was looking at the phone book. "What are you doing boy?"

"Looking up a phone number," Harry replied as he continued scanning down the list of names, not even bothering to look at his uncle.

"Don't take that tone with me," Vernon snapped, his previously good mood at getting everything done early, vanishing now that he had to deal with the freak.

Harry ignored his uncle as he picked up the phone and started dialing the number of Richard Granger.

"What are you doing?!" Vernon demanded as he stepped towards Harry.

"Making a phone call," Harry replied as he finished dialing the number. He held the phone out towards Sarah. "Here."

Sarah drew her wand and blasted Harry's uncle with a stunning charm when he raised his hand to hit him. "Asshole."

'Probably for the best,' Petunia admitted to herself, knowing that Vernon wouldn't react well to any mention of magic. "You're not supposed to use magic outside of school."

"I doubt the ministry even knows I'm here and Harry hasn't received his letter yet so I doubt they have the house monitored," Sarah replied as she walked over and took the phone from Harry.

"Hello?" a weathered voice asked over the phone.

"Is this Richard Granger, brother of Sarah Granger?" Sarah asked, wanting to make sure she'd contacted the right person since his voice sounded a bit different from what she remembered.

"Sarah?" Richard asked in disbelief.

"Yes," Sarah replied cheerfully, recognizing the frustrated way her brother said her name every time she'd caused trouble. "Someone finally woke me up."

Richard glanced over at where Hermione was reading a book on the large chair. "Where are you?"

"Number Four Privet Drive in Surrey, can you come get me?" Sarah asked.

"I'm currently watching my granddaughter, is it safe to bring her?" Richard asked, wanting to make sure his sister hadn't gotten herself in trouble.

"Hermione?" Sarah asked hopefully, figuring that would be easier than his granddaughter that didn't have magic.

"How do you know her name?" Richard asked, wondering how long she'd been awake.

"She's on the family tapestry. I'm safe, I'll explain more once you get here. You might as well bring her, we're going to need to get her a wand," Sarah said, not seeing a reason to make her great niece wait for the official school invite.

"Ah, that explains how she used to get the cookie jar down from the shelf," Richard mused. "We'll be there in thirty minutes."

"Thank you," Sarah told him, relieved that her brother still had her back after fifty years.

Richard laughed. "You're my little sister and I promised Hermione I'd take her to a bookstore. I'll talk to you when we get there."

"Drive safe," Sarah said then hung up, knowing that the sooner she ended the call, the sooner he'd get here. "We should be out of your hair for the rest of the day in thirty to forty minutes."

"That's probably for the best," Petunia admitted, not sure how she was going to explain things to her husband or how long they'd stay married now that she had magic.