Apocalypse: Fairy System

by Macronomicon

The short blade bounced off the shield and hummed through the air, burying itself in the wall a few inches from Jeb’s cheek.

  When the going gets tough, the tough start screaming.

  “HEEEELLLP!” Jeb shouted at the top of his lungs, leaping out of his chair and yanking himself up with telekinesis.

  The keegan hit the ground and drew another blade, swiping at Jeb’s feet under the table, cutting the fancy spring-loaded toe off of his expensive ‘Remónd’ brand prosthetic, which was too dumb to pull itself out of the way.

  Another sword burst through the underside of the table, showering Jeb and the ceiling with wooden shrapnel and drawing a line of blood across Jeb’s good leg.

  Goddamnit, I only got one of those! Jeb thought, aiming his fancy prosthesis at the table.

  Jeb’s newest idea for the Annihilation lens was a void-gun. It was a fairly obvious application of two void lenses with a simple oscillation mechanism between them, rapidly shifting the focus of the lenses forward and then back.

  By shifting the focus back and forth rapidly one time, Jeb was able to create a machine that cut a thumb-sized hole through everything between itself and a point about thirty feet out.

  A machine that was currently embedded in his fancy footwear.

  Jeb fed a trickle of Myst into the Annihilation lens, cutting a hole through the assassin’s last known location, along with the bottom of his heel.

  Whomp!

  Unfortunately, the sound it created wasn’t a cool ‘pew, pew’, but was rather something akin to a tennis ball travelling out of a plastic tube at high speed, due to air collapsing in around the travelling focal point.

  “Agh!” The remains of the table on top of the assassin bucked up and swatted Jeb out of the air, sandwiching him against the wall.

  “What’s going on back there!?” The sound of running feet outside made it into the tiny room just as Jeb peeked above the edge of the frayed table pinning him into the corner of the room.

  In the center of the dimly-lit interrogation room, the assassin clutched a bleeding hole in his shoulder, watching Jeb with fury dancing in his eyes.

  “Stay or go?” Jeb asked, shakily aiming his foot at the attacker. He honestly didn’t have any idea what he could do if the man decided to take Jeb out real quick before he fled. There wasn’t much he could do at this point.

  He’d already exhausted the element of surprise, his hidden ace, and his ability with Myst, in about five seconds of combat.

  But the other guy didn’t know that.

  With a wordless snarl, the assassin drew a cowl over his face, the fabric turning hazy and transparent, before he turned and ran, slamming into the door and blowing the interrogators off their feet.

  I hope they broke something just now, Jeb thought sourly as he watched Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum roll on the floor in agony through the unhinged door. The closer one clutched his wrist where it had been smashed by the handle.

  Hah! Jeb sobered for a moment of thought. Seems awfully premature to send an assassin after me. The people who were ‘dealing’ with the problem Jeb represented had barely begun to exercise their legal options. Why on earth would they default to an assassin when arresting him was pretty much a slam-dunk?

  Unless…the assassin is working for someone else?

  From there, it didn’t take much effort to figure out who Jeb had pissed off over the last couple months.

  Most of them, like the sand-pirates, were dead already, but Jeb could think of one person in particular that might have both a pulse, and an itty-bitty bit of a sore spot in regards to him.

  Garland Grenore.

  I wonder if he actually paid the assassin, or just gave him an IOU?

  Of course, nothing was for certain, but it made a lot more sense than the reaper sending a hitman after him when Jeb was a relative unknown who was already being taken care of.

  Oh well. When I see the assassin again, I’ll kick his ass…her ass? Wait, what did they look like?

  Jeb’s memory of the entire time before the man pulled down his translucent cowl showed him a blurred face. Jeb’s only clue was that the assailant was a keegan male. Probably. Judging by the clothes...

  Goddamn magic hoods! Now he can walk right up and try to shiv me again!

  For that matter, why did the assassin try to kill me now when he probably assumed I’d be killed on reaper charges in less than a week?

  ***Kol Rejan***

  “That was stupid,” Kol muttered, staunching the wound in his shoulder as he leaned against the wall of his room at the inn. He’d assumed the human would be easy pickings after being worked over for an hour by the local police.

  Slip in, take the Impact, slip back out, easy as hosh-spice. Kol knew he could’ve waited for the human to get convicted and executed and called the job done, but he got lazy and greedy. He wanted to cut his time in Solmnath short, and hated missing out on levels.

  All those motivations convinced him that killing a human with two broken arms would be easy. And it should’ve been.

  “Fucker hid a wand in his leg,” Kol muttered as he disinfected the needle and thread in melasian moros. The drink was only good as a disinfectant/firestarter/explosive anyway.

  Fucker’s also a Myst user. Which would have been nice to know, Grenore.

  Kol shook his head. My job, my responsibility. He should’ve done more research into this Jebediah Trapper, but he was a human. Why bother? There, laziness popping up again.

  Unless it was one of the few humans that miraculously survived the Impossible Tutorial, they couldn’t hold a candle to Kol’s power. At least, hypothetically. Kol had memorized the list just in case, too, and there was no Jebediah Trapper on it.

  Apparently I was wrong. Should’ve charged more.

  Kol hissed with pain as he began sewing the wound shut.

  Now I’ve got a big-ass hole in my shoulder because I was lazy. Lesson learned.

  Kol’s new strategy was to hang around Solmnath and heal until they executed the human, then call it a job well done.

  And if he doesn’t get executed…I’m going to have to re-evaluate my strategy.

  That nagging tug from Kol’s Class continued to point out the location of his prey, even as he finished dressing the wound. He wasn’t moving. Excellent.

  ***Jeb***

  Once the assassin was gone, the two ‘detectives’ asked some rather pointed questions about who the man was, and while Jeb had some idea, he couldn’t say anything for sure without possibly lying. Of course, these questions eventually turned toward why there was a twenty-four foot hole in the floor, and not being able to directly lie, this led to Jeb’s improvised weaponry being confiscated.

  Several hours into the second round of questioning, there was another knock on the door.

  “Boys, um…there’s another man here who says he’s the reaper’s legal counsel,” the keegan woman said, peeking her head into the room.

  “Oh, come on!” Croz shouted, dropping the pliers from Jeb’s fingernail. “We haven’t time for another imposter masquerading as a Citizen. The judge is breathing down my neck to have this confession ready to turn in tonight!”

  The judge? Jeb thought, barely cognizant enough to catch that little slip.

  “I’m sorry, he’s just really, really insistent. Do you think you could—”

  “I’ll deal with him,” Camort said, setting down the salt and heading for the door.

  “Out of the way,” a familiar voice said before the secretary was roughly shoved out of the way. Zlesk barged into the room, whipping the Enforcer’s Mark in front of him like a priest warding off Dracula.

  It seemed to have the same effect, as the melas detectives recoiled in horror, minus the hissing.

  “Sit down,” Zlesk said, speaking with the authoritative tone of someone who’d been studying to be sheriff half his life.

  The two melas flopped down on either side of the new table, their knees folding out from under them.

  “You guys okay in there
? Should I get help?” the secretary asked through the door Zlesk held closed with his foot.

  “We’re fine!” Croz raised his voice.

  “All good in here!” Camort shouted, eyes fixed to the Mark.

  “…Okay then.” From the tone, Jeb could picture the woman shrugging and turning away.

  “Excellent. Let’s begin,” Zlesk said, pocketing the Enforcer’s Mark.

  “What took you so long?” Jeb asked.

  “Your friend haggled for a great sum in exchange for his assistance. He seemed rather doubtful that we were working together.”

  “Goddamnit, Ron,” Jeb groaned. His haggling cost Jeb a couple fingernails. Do those even grow back?

  “You two know each other?” Croz asked, glancing between the two of them.

  “Indeed,” Zlesk said, coming up behind Jeb and patting him on the shoulder before leaning forward to whisper in Jeb’s ear.

  “Let me handle this. They’ll respond much better to a keegan Citizen with a Mark than a maimed human.”

  Jeb grunted. It was about as much mental effort as he could devote to any one thing at the moment.

  “This, detectives, is my fat, ignorant patsy.”

  Jeb grunted again.

  “A juicy, wriggling grub to catch a vreek. He’s no more guilty of trafficking children than you or I.”

  Jeb smacked his split lips and tried to work up some unbloodied saliva. This part was important.

  “Judge. Confession.” Jeb struggled to speak, his voice hoarse from screaming.

  “Oh?” Zlesk said, peering at Jeb, then to the two detectives gradually paling from orange to yellow under the former sheriff’s scrutiny.

  “Is there a particular judge driving the investigation against my friend here?”

  “Umm…”

  Zlesk reached out and lifted detective Croz one-handed and stuck him to the ceiling with his Class Ability. He took the man’s seat and sat down in front of Camort, still a head taller than him.

  “Gentlemen, perhaps you don’t understand the gravity here. This judge of yours has already taken my bait. Defending him will bind your fate to his. And there’s only one fate for a reaper.

  “Now.” Zlesk steepled his fingers in the exact way Jeb wanted to, staring down the flustered detective.

  “Do you want to live?”

  Chapter 19: The Trial

  They spilled their guts in every way but the literal way.

  The judge’s name was Mirzos Elkor, and he’d suddenly grown a give-a-shit for the sanctity of human life sometime between the night before last and now. Out of nowhere, the keegan judge had leaned on the detectives’ boss, who had leaned on them to retrieve Jeb and squeeze a confession out of him.

  In an era where Truthseekers existed, forced confessions were still a thing—go figure. If they made Jeb admit to reaping children, they could formally ask him in court if he’d admitted to the crime, which the Truthseeker would identify as ‘the truth’, then they would pack up and call it a day.

  What kind of dystopian bullshit is that? The legal system needs to get its ass ironed out.

  Jeb understood the concept that sometimes people just needed someone to blame, but forcing a false confession when it would be just as easy to get the real bad guy by using a Truthseeker…

  According to Zlesk, this was a custom unique to Solmnath and Judge Elkor in particular, but Jeb had his doubts.

  Well, tick the ‘corrupt government official’ box, Jeb thought to himself, trying not to move too much. Moving hurt. With how slimy this judge was looking to an outside observer, it wasn’t a stretch to think his dirty laundry would be…pretty bad.

  Child trafficking/murdering bad? Time will tell.

  “Send me back to the cell,” Jeb muttered through his swollen lip.

  “Jeb, you need to get some rest. I already paid your bail. I can take you back to the orphanage.”

  “No. I have to stay in jail to stick to the story. These guys can detect a setup. As long as the detectives tell the story we want them to tell, they’ll think their little tactic is working until we have a chance to meet them face-to-face.”

  “What about the guy who tried to kill you?” Zlesk asked.

  Jeb shrugged. “It’ll help me sleep.”

  Zlesk cocked a brow at this, then turned back to the ‘detectives’. “When is the trial?”

  “Tomorrow.”

  “Not wasting any time, are they? That’s abnormally fast,” Zlesk said, rubbing his chin. “Well, it works well for our plans, too.”

  He directed his gaze back up to Tweedle Dee and Dum.

  “Do not speak of the Mark. If you do, I will find out. If you are questioned about the events that transpired here, describe me as a pushy, unscrupulous lawyer hired by the reaper with the last vestiges of his money.”

  “Yessir,” the detectives said, nodding vigorously.

  “Make sure he makes it to solitary, and put a security detail on him to make sure he doesn’t sustain any more damage.”

  “Zlesk…” Jeb groaned. He didn’t need a bunch of people standing around staring at him to make sure he didn’t stub his toe.

  “I’m not budging on that one, so deal with it.”

  “Bleh.”

  “C’mon, I’ll help you,” Zlesk said, lifting Jeb to his foot, where Jeb stood woozily in place, unable to take a step.

  “What’s wrong?” Zlesk asked, frowning.

  “They took my foot,” Jeb mewled—actually mewled. Jeb’s face crumpled up and he tried not to ugly-cry from relief. The stress of getting tortured for an entire afternoon burst out in an unexpected way. “I just got it, too, and it already needs to get fixed!”

  “Um…there, there.” Zlesk awkwardly patted Jeb on the back, seemingly unsure of what to do.

  Jeb took a shuddering breath. “I’m fine. It’s just a dopamine crash from the torture,” Jeb said, waving him off and wiping his face. “I would like my foot back, though.”

  “Umm, sir, that prosthesis contained a Schedule 1 improvised Annihilation Myst weapon…which are illegal,” Dee said.

  “Like, really illegal,” Dum chimed in.

  “Did it enter the official record yet?”

  The two melas glanced at each other. “…No.”

  “Then you didn’t find it. Bring my fat patsy’s foot back right now.”

  “I’m not fat,” Jeb muttered.

  “You are to me,” Zlesk said, patting him on the back more naturally this time. “C’mon, let’s hop your way back to your cell.”

  “Ow, ow OW!” Jeb hissed as Zlesk tried to get an arm under him. Jeb’s arms had been worked over so good, they didn’t want to do anything in particular but rest in a sling for a couple weeks.

  “Hold on, I’ll do this myself,” Jeb muttered, hardening a pegleg out of telekinetic force, and putting it under his stump.

  He gingerly put his weight on it, and was pleased when he didn’t fall on his face. He had to move it mentally rather than physically, which presented extra difficulty when his concentration lapsed, but he managed it.

  Jeb split the thread of Myst in two and used the other one to grab himself by the diaphragm, steadying his balance.

  It was a bit like riding a unicycle and juggling, but it worked.

  Jeb walked out of that room with one foot and no arms. Admittedly, he walked very slowly and laboriously, but he walked.

  Just a few more Deals and I’ll be flying again.

  Jeb sat down on his bed in solitary, gladly accepting his fancy foot back. The toe was crudely glued back on, and it would probably snap off from the pressure of walking in a matter of hours, but Jeb was happy to have it. He slipped the prosthetic back into its proper place on his stump with a grateful sigh before tightening the straps and flopping down on his bed.

  “I’ll see you tomorrow, Jebediah,” Zlesk said.

  “Tomorrow,” Jeb said, waving a hand and closing his eyes.

  Once Zlesk was gone, Jeb opened his eyes again, studying the cracks
in the ceiling.

  The sheer amount of stress he’d endured today had basically tired out his amygdala until it was numb, allowing him to look at a ceiling like any other person might. It was a small island in time where he simply couldn’t feel the slowly encroaching fear.

  It was nice.

  Jeb wanted to feel the scar on his palm to reassure himself, but his fingers were swollen, which was a good change. As long as things continued to change in a way that made sense, Jeb could convince himself he wasn’t in some kind of nightmare hell-loop. It’d been years, but echoes of that strange cyclical thinking still came back to haunt him every now and then.

  But not tonight.

  Tonight, he had the soothing pain of broken arms and the stress of a botched assassination to lull him to sleep. To prove this wasn’t all in his head.

  “I’m really messed up, aren’t I?” Jeb muttered to the ceiling.

  “Yep,” Smartass said solemnly, patting him on the cheek.

  ******

  Jeb only got about five hours of sleep before the sentinels roused him in order to make him more ‘presentable’. They put his more damaged left arm in splints and a sling, while his dislocated right arm got some tightening wraps around the joints to help them stay in place while they healed.

  They gave him a mildly magical tea that brought the swelling down substantially and slipped him into a keegan-style robe to make him look more…official, maybe?

  Between getting his leg back and the loaner walking stick, Jeb was able to totter his way to court without assistance, except for getting out of the carriage. He had some difficulty navigating the marble staircase under the gawking gazes of the spectators, but he managed.

  All the while, Jeb kept his eyes open for the keegan assassin. The chances of the guy coming back for more immediately when he had a hole in his shoulder were slim, but Jeb didn’t intend to be caught off guard again.

  Jeb was led to a seat in the center of the room by the firm hand of one of the sentinels, who remained standing beside him, arms clasped in front.

  Jeb sat in the uncomfortable chair and waited as audience members streamed in around him, taking seats on tiered bleachers that stretched around the central court, like this was a Roman gladiatorial match. As if this was the most entertaining thing they were gonna see all week.