Apocalypse: Fairy System

by Macronomicon

  “With pleasure,” the teen said, wiping off his nose and climbing to his feet.

  Jeb closed his eyes and focused on the dodgeball, trying to recreate his—

  Sploosh!

  Ice-cold slime covered Jeb’s entire body in an instant, soaking him from head to toe. It was cold enough to wrench a gasp out of him as it worked its way into his clothes.

  Jeb’s eyes flew open in time to see red rubber flying towards his face.

  Chapter 25: The Storm

  ***Gale the Roil Chaser***

  Being a Roil Chaser was dangerous work, but it was rewarding, in more ways than one.

  The empire needed to know immediately if the living storm made any unexpected movements, and Gale liked knowing that the advance warning afforded by him and his companions was literally saving lives from the grim fate that awaited them inside the tangled mass of spacetime.

  The incredibly rare and valuable Space and Time lenses that dropped in the wake of the storm were just kind of a bonus. The majority of their pay came from the steady work of mining faradan and government sponsorship.

  The danger came from the monsters the Roil would leave in its wake, strange abominations that often had no matching equivalent in the outside world. These creatures were often aggressive, and always tough, for nothing weak could survive being torn from its home plane and thrown violently into another.

  Gale and his companions were sitting around the fire, sharing stories in the chill desert night, passing the time with some of the only entertainment they could afford, besides sex.

  Gale was currently a relief, so he wasn’t allowed.

  There were myths that children conceived in the shadow of the Roil were malformed, but anyone who’d followed it for longer than a few months had long since been disabused of that notion. The animals in the living storm’s wake didn’t suddenly give birth to two-headed babies or strange malformed hybrids.

  No, that only happened to things that wandered in and survived.

  Gale glanced up at the Roil in the distance, watching the way the invisible sheets of boiling magic stirred up the horizon, making the last light of dusk shimmer from a thousand different angles as time flickered wildly back and forth inside, making a picture of rainbow-colored light.

  The Roil itself was invisible, but its effects were not.

  Behind all the chatter and joking, there was always The Sound, the constant sound of the storm—the sound that seemed to tread the line between a voice and an object travelling down a metallic tube. It started inaudible, then gently worked up the scale until it was a crystalline tinkle, then it went back down again. Always, it sounded like it was on the edge of resolving into a voice, but it never quite made it.

  Gale tuned it out. You either got used to The Sound or you did not and tried to murder yourself and others. It was a legitimate excuse to be dismissed from service, but few people faked the sickness. Being a Roil Chaser was too well-compensated by the empire, and they all had people back home.

  Gale kept talking and laughing with his friends until he noticed The Noise growing unusually louder.

  He glanced up at the storm again. The scintillating rainbow of hundreds of different suns peeking through the storm was much taller than it had been a few seconds ago.

  Is it…moving towards us? But we were directly behind it. Gale frowned. The entire time he’d followed the storm, he’d never seen it change its course more than about fifteen degrees at a time.

  Behind the storm is the safest place to be. That’s what they said.

  Other people noticed the growing storm too, standing to get a better view of the rapidly-approaching storm.

  Gale’s superior, for one.

  “Get on your mounts and ride, you fools!” the man bellowed, sprinting for his tarruk. “Leave everything behind!”

  The aging melas’s words shook Gale out of his stupor, and he leaped to follow suit, mounting his tarruk and spurring it directly away from the oncoming Roil.

  Try as they might, the storm kept growing larger behind them, despite the ground-eating sprint they whipped their tarruks into. Out of the corner of his eye, Gale saw the sergeant motion for them to split up and flee in different directions, in the hopes that some of them would escape to warn Solmnath.

  Gods, let it be me, Gale prayed as the land around him and his mount began to shift rapidly between desert and grassy plains, summer and winter.

  The Noise was starting to sound like a voice.

  Gale put his reins in his teeth and clapped his hands over his ears, his mount’s legs straining as he focused on bearing his rider at top speed.

  ***Jebediah Trapper***

  “In light of the Mark, the Truthseeker-witnessed statements, and the testimony given by these law-abiding humans, I formally instruct the prosecution to drop the charges of Reaping and slave abuse against Jebediah Trapper.”

  The old judge gave a phlegmy cough and clacked his judge-sticks together, and Jeb relaxed in his seat. Jeb’s new judge had directly benefited from him discrediting the other guy, including a pay bump, and an open slot for the man’s grandson to start climbing the political ladder.

  Maybe this will be relatively painless.

  “Now we move on to the civil penalties for failure to register the slaves, and operation of an orphanage without a license.”

  Goddamnit, I should stop thinking positive things, because it’s nothing but a damn lure to attract bad shit. Jeb clenched his teeth. He hadn’t really expected any better from the bureaucratic keegan though, so he’d come armed.

  “If it pleases the court, I didn’t spend the last week fruitlessly. Here are the licenses and slave registrations in question,” Jeb said, patting the folder resting on the table beside him.

  The judge motioned and the bailiff handed him the documents, which the old man read, peering down his gold-rimmed bifocals at the documents, his jaw moving as he read to himself.

  “It all appears to be in order,” he said, handing the folder back to the bailiff. “Your willingness to abide by the law is appreciated.”

  “Your Honor, a non-Citizen cannot own a business or non-profit that has more than ten beneficiaries.” The prosecution spoke, aiming for any little nitpicky thing he could latch onto.

  The judge blinked. “He doesn’t.”

  The prosecutor frowned.

  “What did he mean by that?” Zlesk asked, sitting next to Jeb.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Jeb whispered, waving it off.

  “Quite a heroic decision, sheltering the children of a Stitched species, Zlesk Frantell. Really stepping up to the oath of Citizenship. You do us keegan proud, and I wish we had more like you. Let’s discuss the fines you’ll be required to pay for your first two weeks of unlicensed operation.”

  Jeb bit his hand, trying not to laugh as Zlesk loomed over him. That would get him hurt and damage their credibility.

  “Did you use my signature again?” Zlesk whispered so the judge and prosecutor couldn’t hear.

  “I asked if you were prepared to do what was needed to keep kids out of reaper hands,” Jeb whispered back. “You said yes.”

  “That didn’t mean I wanted to own and operate a gods-damned orphanage, Jeb.”

  “They wouldn’t accept a non-Citizen owner. There’re so many different ways they could’ve taken it away from me.”

  “Then apply for citizenship, you fat little—”

  “Is something wrong?” the judge asked.

  “Nothing, Your Honor. There was some confusion, but it was quickly cleared up,” Zlesk said, suddenly on his best behavior.

  “Good,” the judge said before coughing and spending several seconds clearing his throat. “Then we will continue. In light of the quick response on the part of The Admiral Orphanage, and the special circumstances surrounding its creation, it’s the opinion of this Judge that the penalty be struck down to the bare minimum for lapses of this…”

  The judge droned on, and Jeb could feel Zlesk’s eyes boring into
him.

  “This isn’t over,” Zlesk whispered under his breath.

  ******

  “Well, that was awful,” Jeb said, clipping his murder-buckler back onto his belt, blue arrow down. The buckler had been painted with four arrows in four cardinal directions: yellow, red, blue, and green.

  It’d needed a little dash of color to liven up its ugliness.

  “It could have been much worse,” Zlesk said, rolling his shoulders. “We could have been executed. It’s thanks to my insisting on passing everything through a Truthseeker that we were able to walk out alive.”

  “I knew there was a reason I kept you around,” Jeb said, putting on his fingerless glove and foot before grabbing his staff out of the weapon bin.

  Of course they didn’t let him walk into the court armed to the teeth.

  Strangely, Jeb actually felt overdressed when the two of them stepped out into the open on the sunlit steps of the courthouse.

  Rather than a stream of ordinary citizens going about their boisterous business and the occasional purse-snatcher, there was a more muted sense of potential energy in the crowd.

  They passed by the imperial guards stationed on every street corner, their sharp eyes boring through each and every passerby, and especially Jeb and Zlesk.

  The emperor’s arrival two days ago had seen the entire city placed under a curfew, especially in the upscale areas where the man might be visiting.

  Today was the last day they had the mercenary bodyguards, but Zlesk was back in fighting condition, Legolas was armed, Ron was able to sit up, and Jeb’s arm was healing nicely. Even his missing fingernails had stopped hurting. They were ready to meet up with Brett and Amanda.

  They’d gradually reinforced the orphanage, leveled the older children and their supervision, so hopefully once the mercs left, they didn’t present an appetizing target.

  Still, if anything is going to go down, it’s going to go down soon, Jeb thought, patting the legalese in his coat pocket. It was a series of testimonies and stolen financial information that linked the murder of children to financial transactions.

  Maybe Jeb couldn’t get all the bad guys, but he could definitely sway public opinion; make these guys politically toxic enough that some kind of reckoning would come their direction.

  Then again, maybe not.

  All of this had been in Jeb’s letter, and now all he needed to do was hand the list to Amanda and Brett. Then he could stand back and let the new human aristocrats handle human politics. Kind of a bitter half-win, but being an adult was basically a long string of bitter half-wins.

  “You ready to party?” Jeb asked, straightening his jacket and the revolver on his hip. He was ready to party.

  Zlesk grunted, making sure his collar was even. They weren’t going to ‘The Party’, which was where the emperor was being hosted by the richest local aristocrats. They were going to the little servant’s entrance in the back of the magnificent mansion, which made Zlesk’s orphanage look like a dingleberry by comparison.

  They were going to meet Brett there, hand off all the dirt they’d uncovered on the local leadership, then slink away into the darkness—maybe grab a beer.

  Would it change anything? Probably not. One or two people might be mildly inconvenienced, but at the very least, it would grant an iota of political clout to non-child-murdering humans over people who viewed thinking creatures as a resource to be used for their benefit.

  Still, Jeb expected his faceless keegan friend might want to make an entrance, so he was loaded with every weapon he could think of, and ready to kick some ass.

  I’m gonna be ready for him this time, Jeb thought, eyes narrowed, thinking back to dodgeball.

  The sun was arcing down in the sky when they arrived at the mansion, a brightly-lit jewel among the slowly darkening streets. Imperial guards got thicker the closer they got, but Jeb and Zlesk were able to mix into the crowd easily enough.

  Despite being heavily armed, they seemingly weren’t considered much of a threat, especially when weighed against the aristocrats on either side of them: men and women with decorative, but functional magic swords that burst into flame or treated stone like warm butter, and an average of three wands per person sticking out of their belt like old-fashioned gunslingers.

  Jeb and Zlesk fit right in, albeit rather poor-looking and mismatched in comparison.

  Jeb let his eyes wander as they waited to get through the oversized main gate. The luxurious wands the aristocrats bore had designs and murals along their sides that hinted at their function, and Jeb was pretty sure he’d seen a mural of two melas humping.

  “I could’ve brought my party lenses,” Jeb said aloud, thinking back to the ones he’d gleaned from the strip clubs between Kalfath and Solmnath.

  Zlesk glanced over to where Jeb was looking and snorted. “Don’t bother. Nobody likes that guy.”

  They slipped away from the stream of aristocrats slowly entering the front gate and kept walking around the back.

  Jeb was fairly sure one of the imperial guards was going to stop them as soon as they stepped out of the stream, but the guards posted every ten feet or so simply watched them dispassionately.

  Weird, Jeb thought, watching them back.

  You’d think they’d stop and question every single suspicious actor, but that doesn’t seem to be the case.

  There weren’t a whole lot of humans, and none of them were dressed quite as overtly combat-oriented as Jeb was. You’d think that would earn a few questions, but for some reason, they just watched the two of them passively.

  Well, no skin off my back, Jeb thought as they headed for the back of the oversized mansion. At least he didn’t have to worry about being attacked by the assassin. The guy probably wouldn’t come within miles of this place, with imperial guards studding the landscape.

  Jeb found Brett waiting outside the servant’s entrance. The supermodel was sitting on a fountain, eating an apple in the dark, faintly lit by the torches of the rear entrance.

  Feels weird doing shady deals under the watchful eye of the imperial guard. But I doubt they have any skin in this particular game. Jeb figured they were a neutral party.

  Or Brett betrayed me, and I’m dead meat. That’s always on the table.

  “Brett!” Jeb said as he approached, the gravel of the rear lot crunching under his feet. “You technically outrank me now, so I’m calling in that IOU! I’ll give ‘er back in the morning. Probably.”

  Brett frowned, his head cocked to the side.

  Brett knows what I’m talking about. He has to know what I’m talking about.

  Jeb looked harder, and saw the Myst packed in tight around the man’s face, forming the familiar features of his friend from the Tutorial.

  Ah, son of a bitch. That’s not Brett. Option three, I guess, Jeb thought, reaching for his buckler as all hell broke loose.

  ***Korzath, level 43 Imperial Guard***

  Korzath watched impassively as a half-dozen black-clothed assassin types jumped out of the fountain and the hedges, surrounding the one-legged human in a flat second.

  There was a fair amount of shouting, and one of the kidnappers died to the human’s weapons, but in a handful of seconds, the human and his keegan associate were brought down and restrained, then dragged into the mansion.

  He stifled a yawn.

  They were under instructions from their superior not to interfere with the business of any one-legged humans today. Didn’t want to get caught up in the Emperor’s Summons.

  He’d been around long enough to know a Summons when he saw one. Getting tied up and dragged into the emperor’s presence was uncommon, but not unheard-of, especially for people who normally had no interest in appearing before him.

  Just one of those nights, he thought, glancing up at the horizon.

  Sunset’s got a lot of color.

  ***Jeb***

  Jeb opened his eyes with a groan, barely able to see through the rapidly swelling bruise on his left eye.

 
He already knew the score: Someone had intercepted his communication with the Courvars and set an ambush, and the only reason he was still alive was because they didn’t know if he had backup blackmail material…which he did.

  As soon as they had that in their hands, Jeb’s life was forfeit.

  And I can’t even lie. Goddamnit, this is going to be difficult.

  “Good evening,” a sophisticated-looking melas man with a well-groomed goatee said upon noticing Jeb’s noise. “I thought you might be out longer than that, but you’re surprisingly resilient.”

  He was wearing a green and gold tunic that would’ve looked garish on someone whose skin wasn’t nearly red. His horns seemed almost delicate, swept back like a pompadour. Behind him loomed two more melas thugs with their arms crossed, watching Jeb with that distinctive pleasure that only the very dim took in other people’s suffering.

  In the noble’s hand, Jeb’s ‘big stack o’ reaping proof’ gradually burned down to cinders, licking the man’s fingertips without effect, and scattering paper ashes all around.

  “Ugh,” Jeb grunted, doing a self-inventory. He was wearing nothing but bruises, his wrists were bound behind his back by thick scratchy rope, and a cold circle of steel was clamped around his neck…which seemed to be connected to the wall by a thick chain.

  All of Jeb’s clothes and weapons were lying on a big table at the side of the room. His murder-buckler was lying on the edge, yellow arrow pointed diagonally down toward Jeb’s legs.

  Jeb shifted his foot out of the way.

  I wonder if I can pick the lock on this thing, Jeb thought, siphoning a thread of Myst out of his Core.

  Something grabbed Jeb’s siphon and shoved it painfully deep into his Core, forcibly drawing Myst out of his body. The experience was deeply unpleasant, like a blowjob from a Shop-Vac.

  “Gah!” Jeb thrashed in place on the cold stone floor, the chains connected to his neck rattling as something tried to suck all the magic out of his body in a terrifyingly literal sense. The siphon connecting him to the collar gradually grew bigger, seemingly reinforced by the Myst it was stealing from him.