by Macronomicon
Right away, they noticed it was not going to be a wand. It would look like a Spaceman Spiff laser and be incredibly unwieldy, given its size. In the end, Jeb opted to fix the contraption to the top of a staff.
Just like the Beautiful Revenge, it was a three-part sandwich: Control/Animal/Annihilation. The parabolic dish of shiny amalgam on the top would, in theory, increase the effective width of the lenses far beyond what was possible with a single lens.
They attached the contraption to the top of a piece of hardwood that rested in the hand just right, and disguised the satellite-dish shape of the head with some of the staff’s gnarled roots.
Then they stood back and took in what they had created.
It looked…kinda goofy. The head was too big, as well as garish where the elegant wood gave way to resin and silver amalgam.
“Not winning any beauty pageants,” Eddie said, chewing his lower lip.
“Not supposed to,” Jeb said, hefting the staff in his hand. Sadly, the creation was too delicate to be smacking people over the head with it, but hopefully what it lacked in durability, it made up in power.
“Outside!” Eddie said, pointing to the staircase as soon as Jeb hefted the staff. “I don’t need a frightened death deer tearing up the shop.”
Jeb obliged, heading up to the surface, using the staff to assist his gait. It was a little strange using a walking stick with such a big top, but Jeb supposed he could get used to it.
Maybe if I shorten the entire thing so the dish isn’t moving around in my periphery.
Jeb made it to the backyard, confirmed no children were standing nearby and aimed the stick in front of him. Behind him, Eddie crossed his arms and waited.
Jeb fed a drop of Myst through the staff.
A majestic black and rust-colored stag with twelve points to its magnificent antlers came into being directly in front of Jeb. The antlers had a strange aura of black and purple that seemed to pulse and quiver with barely-restrained energy.
Sadly, it was about the size of his palm.
The teacup-sized buck let out a startled bleat as it dropped down into the grass, falling from a height of about four feet.
“Maybe give it a little more juice,” Eddie noted, his voice dry.
“I can see that,” Jeb said, dialing up the output internally severalfold.
The next summon was about two feet tall, and from there, Jeb was able to quickly zero in on the amount of Myst it took to make a stag-sized stag. Jeb pushed it a little further, creating one nearly the size of a horse.
“Try it out on the wall,” Eddie said, nodding toward the brick wall fencing in the back of the manor.
Jeb was tempted to have the big stag ram it, but he decided on the teacup-sized one, just to be safe. The tiny stag bounded through the grass while the humans watched, leaping five feet up into the air and goring the brick wall with its antlers, treating the stone like softened butter.
The little stag managed to chew a hole through the wall before Jeb stopped him a moment later.
Jeb glanced over at the oversized stag standing next to him, whose shoulders were on the same level as Jeb’s. Its antlers were longer than Jeb’s arm and practically hummed with Annihilation Myst.
It looked back at him with a curious look, seeming to ask: You want me to go next?
No, I do not. We’ve only got so much wall, and Pedro would probably kick my ass if I destroyed the wall…more.
“Hey Pops!” Colt said, rounding the corner.
“What?” Jeb asked, he and Eddie glancing over at the teen.
“Nancy’s awake…” he said, frowning as he thumbed over his shoulder, eyeing the man-sized stag. “What are you guys doing?”
“Science project,” Jeb said, facing him, resisting the impulse to hide the staff behind his back.
“Right… Well, Nancy woke up a few hours ago, and Mrs. Everett says you can talk to her now.”
“Not bad for a prototype. Gimmie,” Eddie said, snatching the satellite dish/staff out of his hand. The old man took the staff and retreated back into his cave, muttering something about gravitational lensing as he did.
“Alright, let’s go debrief Nance,” Jeb said, wiping grease off his hands.
“Hold up,” Colt said, grabbing Jeb’s shoulder and glancing around like he was guilty of something. “Can I ask you something?”
“Yeah?”
“Zlesk says you’re some kind of savant at killing people?”
Jeb rolled his eyes. “You get lucky and kill one pirate crew, and everybody suddenly thinks you’re a murder savant.”
“How do you do it? Kill people?”
Jeb’s eyes narrowed, looking the teen up and down. “You wanna know because you think killing people is cool, or because you don’t wanna choke and get somebody else killed?”
The kid shrugged noncommittally, and Jeb almost throttled him.
“You ever watch those movies where the bad guy kills the hero’s family?”
“Like The Punisher?” Colt asked.
“Yeah, like The Punisher. Don’t be like The Punisher. Think real hard about how much harm enemies could inflict on your friends and family if you leave them alive to nurse a grudge. It helps.”
“But…”
“Yeah,” Jeb said, nodding. “I know. We missed our shot and now there’s any number of people out there who are just aching to hit us where it hurts. Consider this a cautionary tale of what not to do.”
Colt absorbed that silently for a moment, staring at his shoes before glancing back up at Jeb. “I hate my Myst power.”
“Why? It’s a great power. You’ll never be out of lube.”
Colt’s cheeks flushed. “No, you and Zlesk and that other guy all got out of it in a couple seconds. It doesn’t work on anyone important.”
“Colt, your build sucks and you’re using it wrong,” Jeb said, breaking the harsh news to him. “Your slime is a godsend for crowd control, but you wanna go after the Big Bad. Mathematically, you will always have the most impact on a battle acting as support. If you can’t nut up and accept that, you will always be pushing more burden onto your teammates. You’ve got a ranged bonus; lean into that harder, too. Get yourself an actual sling and learn how to use it.”
“But if I wasn’t up on that roof, that guy would’ve killed you.”
Jeb frowned. “If I recall correctly, you got knocked out and I shoved him off the edge. If you’d stayed downstairs and helped Zlesk, odds are you two would’ve subdued the people in the courtyard fast, and Zlesk would’ve been fresh enough to help us take down the guy that’s been killing your friends.
“I know Zlesk isn’t going to give you shit about it, but you’re the reason he’s laid up,” Jeb said, poking Colt in the chest. And I’m the reason Kebos got away, Jeb thought, his mind wandering to his missing foot.
Then Jeb saw tears budding in the teen’s eyes.
Ah crap, I think I might’ve broke him.
Jeb opened his mouth to apologize, but Colt spoke first.
“How do I get better?” he asked, looking up at Jeb.
Jeb chewed his lip. “Talk to Zlesk. Ask him to teach you how to fight when he heals. Talk to Eddie, ask him to make you a magic sling or something. Then experiment with your slime. Can you harden it? Make it come out hot? Cold? Sticky? Can you be Spider-Man? Can you change the lubrication? Change its viscosity? Specific gravity? Does it float in water? Any change you can make or unique properties you discover are going to greatly expand your options in a fight.”
Colt was beginning to lean back, like he was being forced away by a deluge of condescending advice. Luckily, Jeb only had one more tip before he let the kid off the hook.
“And most importantly, never stop thinking.”
“Okay.” Colt nodded, presumably having absorbed almost none of that advice.
“Okay, let’s go talk to Nancy.”
Jeb followed Colt out to the front of the mansion, where one of the mercenaries dropped Mrs. Everett’s sandwich, gaping
at the massive stag trotting along beside Jeb.
Can’t get hoofmarks on the rug.
“Buck, your name is Buck now,” Jeb said to the big buck. “You stay out here with your friends and don’t let anyone hurt the children, capiche?”
Buck nodded.
I wonder if it’s the control lens or inborn intelligence from being a magic construct, Jeb thought.
Together, he and Colt headed in and met with Nancy. With a bit of begging, they were allowed to let in Zlesk. Although Nancy didn’t seem particularly happy to see a keegan up close and personal again, she held it together admirably.
For his part, the beat-up keegan sat in the corner of the room, trying to look as non-threatening as possible.
The little girl was recovering from a cut on her shoulder, and a stab to the liver that should’ve been lethal, save for the fact that her Body was obscenely high, and children’s livers hadn’t yet been subjected to the same trauma as an adult’s.
The little girl was inspecting the back of her hand when they entered the room. Jeb didn’t see anything on it, so he declined to comment, simply sitting down.
Over the course of the afternoon, they carefully dissected what she had witnessed that night. She had witnessed the exchange between O’sut and the judge with her own eyes, heard him call the judge by name, even, and witnessed him kill Jake.
The fucker was going down. But the account didn’t give Jeb any clue how he was going to come after the rest of the nobles who’d purchased XP bags from O’sut. Presumably a few of them might have been hosting children at their homes. These children were most likely disposed of as soon as word got out about the raid on O’sut’s puppy mill.
“Rules are in place to protect you,” Zlesk said, rubbing his chin.
“You get something from that?” Jeb asked, glancing over his shoulder at the keegan in the corner, far away from the little girl’s bed. Nancy watched him with apprehension.
“Yes. If Nancy’s recollection is correct, O’sut said ‘you just committed a reaping, not an Honor Duel.’”
“Does that mean something?” Jeb asked.
“It implies that the rule is that the nobles must trick the children into challenging them to an Honor Duel, which they will then win handily.”
“That’s disgusting.”
“You don’t know the half of it. The winner of an Honor Duel is free from legal repercussions for the murder of the loser. Any of the aristocrats of Solmnath who’ve successfully tricked and murdered a child is legally untouchable for that murder,” Zlesk said, tightening his boney fingers into a fist. “This loophole must be closed.”
That explained why the judge was so desperate to stop Jeb from reaching O’sut. The judge had been so brazenly overconfident that he hadn’t covered his ass, legally speaking.
“What, there’s no age limit on Honor Duels?” Jeb asked.
“Not really,” Zlesk said, before his expression brightened. “But there is a book.”
“Go on.”
“Every Honor Duel that takes place in the empire must be recorded as such. Otherwise, what proof is there it wasn’t a simple killing?”
Jeb thought about it for a moment. “Are you telling me there’s a big book somewhere that’s got a list of names, and on one side will be people like ‘Baron Von Kraggle’, and the other side will have ‘Timmy the Orphan’?”
“Basically. It’s called the Book of Honor, and it’s kept in City Hall. In this case, ‘book of honor’ might be a misnomer.”
Jeb leapt to his feet. “If we get that book, we can get them for child trafficking! We get their names, trace the money they spent to buy the children from O’sut, and we’ve got them.”
“Identify the culprits, then take them down for any reason we can. Normally I would have moral objections to this, but this kind of scum needs to be removed,” Zlesk said, nodding.
“Get up!” Jeb said, heading for the door. “Let’s get to this book before they do. If you know about it, they have to know about it, too. If they haven’t come after it already, they will soon!”
“Jeb…” Zlesk said.
“What?” Jeb asked, glancing over his shoulder.
“You’ve got a broken arm, your other doesn’t work so good, and your foot is still in the shop.”
Jeb glanced down at the loaner pegleg, just visible past his arm in a sling. “What’s your point?”
“We’re not in the best shape to go after it,” Zlesk said, motioning to his own bandaged form.
“Hmm… understood. Better get help,” Jeb said, chewing his lip as he went through his list of contacts. For an operation like this, he wanted someone smart…someone stable…someone with Myst powers...
******
“Someone like you,” Jeb said, clapping Eddie on the back. They were standing on the roof of a building somewhat overlooking the center of the city of Solmnath. The hot sun was just beginning to ease up, but the rooftops themselves were still toasty against bare skin.
“This really doesn’t seem like a good idea,” the wild-haired roboticist said, setting up his satellite dish and aiming it toward City Hall.
“You didn’t think the funding and the power-leveling was going to be free, did you?” Jeb asked. “Besides, we’re hunting child-killers. Be more stoked.”
“Plenty of kids to go around,” Eddie grumbled. He tapped Legolas on the top, and the drone rose up into the air, resting on a silent plume of air. The drone was a modified package carrier from a nearby derelict Amazon warehouse, so carrying a book shouldn’t be too hard.
The stealing part, though; that was going to be Eddie. Why? Because Eddie had two working hands and Jeb couldn’t read the aliens’ chicken-scratch.
Soon as I get some free time, I need to get right on that… Just as soon as I finish making all my weapons, search the rest of my body for those weird implants in the fifth dimension, find and kill all the people who profited from murdering children….
I might be illiterate for a while.
Indefinitely, if he got murdered.
Eddie stared down at the City Hall for a moment, then back to Jeb. “I don’t think I can do this.”
“Eddie, you’re gonna have the best backup you could possibly ask for. Legolas here,” Jeb said, pointing with his thumb. “You told me yourself he’s the most advanced drone on the face of the planet. He’s as smart as a golden retriever.”
Legolas’s cameras oriented on Jeb and the whole thing wobbled in place, the only method of emoting the drone had.
“What about you?” Eddie asked, his eyes pleading.
“I will be your lookout,” Jeb said. “If you die, I will make sure to tell everyone back at the orphanage what happened to you.”
Eddie paled.
“And if something goes wrong, I’ll just tell you.” Jeb picked up the old phone connected to the dish and spoke into it, his voice echoed by the speakers on the drone’s body.
“Testing, testing, one, two, three.”
“Do I have to do this?” Eddie whined.
“No,” Jeb grudgingly admitted. “But I can keep you out of the basement for an entire afternoon if you don’t.”
The old man’s face became a mask of stone-like determination.
“Let’s do this.”
***Kol Rejan, level 57 Courier***
Kol glanced up, the tugging sensation in his mind leading him unerringly to his prey. The human was above him, on the roof of the building for some reason.
This fellow might be more trouble than he’s worth. Word was the man had been tapped by an enforcer to stir up trouble in Solmnath.
Now Kol had to decide whether or not to try and make good on his assassination. As a professional, he had to weigh the risk of crossing an enforcer against the damage to his reputation.
Silently, Kol climbed up a nearby building, his entire frame hauled up by the tips of his fingers, moving as swiftly as a spider. He came to rest on the top of the building next to his target, who was blissfully ignorant of hi
s presence.
Kol settled into a nook in the rooftop, watching Jebediah Trapper from a sheltered viewpoint. He seemed to be talking with some other human with white hair. The two of them looked at City Hall quite a few times during their talk, indicating the target of their current scheming.
Kol wanted the human all to himself this time, so he waited until the white-haired human left out the back of the building.
Here we go, Kol thought as Jebediah Trapper settled into a meditative posture, his defenses lowered. The keegan assassin silently drew his blade, moments from leaping over to the next building.
He stopped when a thought occurred to him.
Actually…why get paid once? Now that the human had revealed himself as an agent of Vresh Tekalis and exposed Judge Elkor’s dirty secrets, there were sure to be dozens of others willing to pay Kol to silence him.
Laziness and greed, Kol admonished himself, shaking his head. No. I’ll do this now, then leave the city. I’ve lingered too long.
Kol jumped across to the next building.
Chapter 23: Fan Mail
“Any interest in going with him?” Jeb asked Smartass as Eddie left, his drone taking off and flying high above his creator, a golden retriever intellect keeping an extra eye on the situation.
“You know what the normal response to a fairy in the halls of government is?” Smartass asked, watching Jeb from his shoulder.
“A rolled-up newspaper?” Jeb asked, glancing over at her.
“Yes!” Smartass shouted, shaking her fist. “Just because we occasionally make Deals with ignorant farmers for their children, and sometimes we’re forced to steal all their sweets, potatoes and cream when they renege, and every once in a while, we lead some to greatness that makes others mad with envy.”
“I have noticed the aliens are unusually quick to accept a Deal,” Jeb said, nodding. “You said lead them to greatness? Was that a Deal?”
“Oh no, that’s another way to gather Impact.”
“Do tell.”
“Okay.” Smartass held up her fingers. “I think you’re ready for Wizard Lesson number two. Another source of Impact to truth speakers is Guiding, which is helping someone discover their Role.”