by Macronomicon
“I see. It was immature of me to expect you to simply ignore death sniffing at your door. Perhaps you need some entertainment to bring back the mood,” the emperor said, rubbing his beak. He snapped his fingers together, the claws dimpling his palm. “I know! How about I Summon a guest to liven things up?”
The few remaining nobles looked confused, murmuring to each other under their breath. The emperor’s infamous Ability to Summon was not typically used as a party trick.
“I don’t know who could possibly take our minds off—”
SKRRRR!
A circular saw popped through the ceiling with an ear-piercing whine, heading straight for the bird sitting on the throne at a speed that Brett could barely make out. It was little more than an afterimage in Brett’s vision by the time it made contact with the emperor.
The kitri lazily raised a hand and caught the spinning blade between thumb and forefinger, inches away from his beak.
“Jebediah Trapper.”
The fancily-dressed melas standing next to Brett paled, his goblet warping in his grip.
CRACK!
The ceiling in front of the throne gave way, and a dismembered body fell through the ceiling in a rain of blood, splattering the audience in gore as it hit the ground.
A fraction of a second later, Jebediah Trapper fell through the ceiling, naked and coated from head to toe in blood, a thick iron collar around his neck. The one-legged human had a death grip on the chain and when it jerked to a halt halfway to the floor, it tore itself out of his hand, applying the rest of Jeb’s momentum to his neck.
“Hurk!”
Jeb went still for a moment, looking like one of those Japanese weather dolls as he hung by the neck in front of the emperor.
Is he…dead? Brett thought, his heart sinking. Did Pikaku just kill him with his Summon? It’s a damn good thing Amanda isn’t here. If Amanda thought they’d gotten Jeb killed by telling the emperor about him, she’d be inconsolable for weeks.
After a moment of ominous silence, Jeb gave a choked gasp and reached behind his head, grabbing the chain to take the weight off his neck.
“How’s it hanging?” he groaned, eyeing the audience as he spun in place, suspended above them like a bloody, naked human chandelier.
***Jebediah Trapper***
Jeb didn’t know how long he was out; being unconscious was like that. But when he woke up, he was hanging from the ceiling, his entire body was tingling from a bruised spine, and—I can’t breathe!
Jeb desperately reached up behind his neck and grabbed the chain, pulling up as hard as he could with the awkward angle.
With Jeb’s supernatural strength and resilience…it was enough to let him catch his breath and take a moment to get his bearings.
Beneath him, rather than an endless abyss like he had feared, there was a ballroom filled with ostentatiously dressed folk of every species, including the Big Bird-looking dude up on the throne, casually setting aside Jeb’s buckler.
Must…be…sarcastic….
“How’s it hanging?” Jeb asked the crowd as he spun like a DIY disco ball, his voice hoarse from the damage to his neck.
The emperor honked. He sounded like a goose, except a two hundred pound one.
“Jebediah Trapper,” the creature nesting on the throne said, head wobbling slightly from side to side in what Jeb could only assume was mirth. “I believe you have a list of names for me?”
“Ummm…”
Above Jeb, the table with all his shit slipped a bit deeper into the hole, tilting sideways. Jeb’s faux foot rolled off and tumbled down into the gaping hole between the two floors. The fancy prosthetic spun and whirled down into the waiting palm of the emperor.
In the beaked creature’s claws, the hidden compartment simply popped open on its own, the unfaithful slattern.
“Oh, here it is,” the emperor said, pinching the tightly-folded list out of the tiny compartment and idly tossing Jeb’s foot aside.
“Set up the transmitter.”
Jeb got a bird’s-eye view as a dark knight swept out from behind the emperor’s throne, seemingly invisible until a second ago. They held one of the strange orbs that passed for a magical camera, and with a swift motion, set it up behind the emperor’s throne.
The bird-man deliberately unfolded the list of names taken from the Book of Honor, his eyes scanning the page.
“No!” Mr. Sophistication shouted, lunging forward.
“Kratz Velos.”
The charging melas was tackled by a nearby human with short-cropped brown hair….
Is that Brett? Jeb wondered, frowning as his fingers searched for a weak spot on the chain.
“Adensus Parvey.”
One of the keegan near the front of the room went stock-still for an instant before he turned to run away, aiming for the oversized double doors.
The imperial guard, so seemingly lax in the hours leading up to this moment, had formed a wall of flesh and steel between the nobles and freedom.
The emperor kept reading names off the list, causing all the remaining thirty-some nobles to show reactions that ranged from outrage to sheer unbridled terror.
Are… Are these people all the ones on the list, and only the ones on the list? Jeb thought, frowning.
The emperor had just easily rounded up all the people Jeb had basically thrown up his hands and given up on. The question was… How the hell did he do it without spooking them?
“You might be wondering why I called you here,” the emperor said, setting the list aside. “The perceptive amongst you might have noticed that there is a common thread connecting the nobles of Solmnath that I have assembled before me.
“And that is—”
“Pip three—Hurk!”
Jeb jerked in place as the cone of force speared up through the chain link, widening it just enough to release the collar. The spear of force shot up above his head and broke the damaged ceiling a little more while Jeb fell the last ten feet to the hard marble floor, slamming down on top of the legless corpse.
From the perspective of millions of people living throughout the empire, a bloody, naked man fell flailing into frame, interrupting the emperor mid-reveal. The man covered his genitals, gave a sheepish wave, and hopped out of frame.
Cool as a cucumber, the emperor kept going.
“Each and every one of you has killed a human child under the age of twelve for no purpose other than to gain levels. In the common parlance, we call this ‘reaping’.”
One of the keegan nobles stepped forward, shaking his fist. “Those were Honor Duels! We were merely defending ourselves from upstart humans. Accusing us of reaping is an overreach of power, even for you!”
“Yeah,” another said. “The victors of Honor Duels are protected by law! You have no grounds to accuse us of anything!”
The emperor tapped a claw against the side of his beak, head waggling slightly. “Indeed, I can’t punish you for slaughtering human children under the guise of Honor Duels.”
“Hah!”
“I can punish you for funding immortality experiments. Kebos O’sut.”
Jeb frowned. He spotted some kind of grey Myst moving around the emperor, but it was almost like an inverted ripple—as if the Myst moved inward toward the kitri the instant before he said the name, then rippled back outward after he said it.
That’s…weird.
Doors to the side of the throne burst open, and a battered keegan in chains was carried inside by imperial guards, his head drooping.
“This wanted criminal was driven back inside the walls of the city by the Roil. What should we do with him?”
“Put him right there,” the emperor said, pointing at the foot of his dais. The imperial guards tossed the keegan into the center of the room, then they seamlessly joined the wall of steel trapping the rest of the guests inside the ballroom.
“As you might know, research into any kind of immortality, and the deliberate engineering thereof, is punishable by death.”
The emperor flipped the list around and showed it to Kebos O’sut. “Were these children biologically immortal?”
Kebos lifted a bruised eye, peering through the list of names. “Yes.”
The surrounding guests immediately protested. “This is preposterous! You can’t just—”
The black knight flickered across fifty feet in the blink of an eye and punched the noble in the face hard enough to shatter his jaw—and more importantly, shut him up.
“And did these people...” The emperor moved his hand to the other side of the list. “...provide the capital required to make these children immortal?”
“Yes,” O’sut said, blood dripping from his teeth.
“Well, there you have it,” the kitri said, leaning back in his throne and casually folding the list.
“In light of the nature of the crime and as a gesture of goodwill toward the newest race to join the empire, I would like my human vassals to carry out the punishment. Mr. Courvar? Ms. Stile?”
The knight dressed head-to-toe in spiky black armor flicked her wrist, a jagged blade manifesting in her hand an instant before it crunched through the broken-jawed keegan’s wrist, followed by his neck.
All hell broke loose.
The nobles, whose composure had been holding on by a thread, panicked, scattering every direction like scared rabbits.
The imperial guards were composed of high-level aristocrats themselves, and they shoved the panicked men and women back into the center of the room through sheer superhuman strength, forcing them into a narrow kill box in the center of the hall, where the black knight went to town on their asses.
Brett was doing his own thing. He wasn’t able to move quite as quickly as the black knight, but he hit hard, and every once in a while Jeb caught a flash of light interspersed in the underwear model’s movements.
Seeing an opportunity to complete his Deal with Vresh, Jeb hopped out from the side of the room, aiming for Kebos, snatching up his errant foot and yanking it on as he did.
“Mr. O’sut!” Jeb said, aiming a finger.
The keegan glanced up, exposing his eye-holes.
“Pip four.”
O’sut threw up a manacled hand, interposing his hand between the spear and his eye.
The spear of force caught the restrained keegan’s hand and dragged him six feet across the hall, until it buried itself in the hard marble floor.
Gotta follow up, Jeb thought, hobbling forward as quickly as he could.
“You bastard! This is your fault!” O’sut said, flinging himself to his feet and charging Jeb. Jeb held out his palm, spread as wide as he could, and the telekinetic shield popped into being between them.
The keegan’s eyes widened as his fist was stopped by the invisible shield, giving Jeb enough time to get out of the way, catching the man’s wrist and wrenching it around the stationary shield. The move drew an anguished cry out of O’sut’s lungs rather than breaking the keegan’s arm like Jeb had been hoping, due to his likely insane Body.
And that was about as far as Jeb’s plan got. The keegan killer adapted faster, whipping his body the rest of the way around the shield and grabbing Jeb’s head, riding him to the ground.
From the expression on the man’s face, and the way he wrapped his oversized fingers around Jeb’s skull, he was planning on popping Jeb’s head like a grape. The keegan was even starting to drool a little, his eyes bloodshot.
As much as Jeb wanted to accuse him of throwing a tantrum, the man was about to crush his skull, so he was much more preoccupied with trying to alleviate the mounting pressure on his braincase.
Jeb grunted, pulling on O’sut’s wrists, but it was like trying to stop a Mack truck with a wall made of cardboard boxes.
And it certainly isn’t helping this fucking headache! Jeb thought as he struggled in the noble’s grip.
He tried to think of an out. With the suppression collar on, Jeb was even more gimped than usual, unable to simply shove him off telekinetically.
Usually the solution is to shoot an eye out, Jeb thought, taking his hand away from the man’s wrist, allowing the pressure on his skull to redouble for an instant as he aimed his finger at the killer’s face.
The keegan lunged forward, his pearly teeth nipping Jeb’s finger off in a fraction of a second before spitting it aside.
“Pip five!” Jeb shouted before the pain even registered. “Gah!”
The spear flew out from the severed tip of Jeb’s finger and caught a random noble in the side, forcing him to drop his magical blade, which skittered across the marble floor toward the two of them.
Jeb reached out and grabbed it, swinging with everything he had at the manic Keegan’s face. The blade didn’t penetrate more than an eighth of an inch into the bone. O’sut grabbed the blade barehanded and wrenched it away.
Okay, this isn’t looking good, Jeb thought. Time for the nuclear option.
“Room full of Cha—” O’sut shoved bloody fingers into Jeb’s mouth and leaned forward.
Right there, at their most excellent moment together, they both saw exactly what was going to happen next: O’sut was going to rip Jeb’s jaw off.
Jeb started winking as fast as he could, alternating between left and right, hoping he could go faster than O’sut could tear off his favorite jaw.
O’sut tensed for a moment before flinching and letting out a howl of pain, a bit of smoke emerging from over his shoulder.
Jeb finished the third wink on his left side, completing the alternate trigger for the ‘Room full of Charlies’ command.
Telekinetic spears flew out in every direction, dozens catching the child-killer in the chest and flinging him up into the high ceiling above them.
Several spears were absorbed by the reinforced shields of the surrounding nobles, and the emperor leaned out of the way of another one, where it drilled a hole in the throne behind his head.
Jeb scrambled to the side, snatching up the sword while his spears held O’sut stapled to the ceiling. Jeb’s grip almost slipped, his right hand slick with gushing blood as it was. He wrapped his dry left hand around the handle too, making damn sure he had a good grip on the blade.
A moment later, the spears ran their course and the keegan fell down from the ceiling, hitting the marble hard.
Jeb didn’t wait for him to get up, or even twitch. He heaved the blade down like he was trying to win a prize.
The blade sank into the rock-hard flesh and most of the way through the Keegan’s spine, killing him instantly. Jeb wrenched the blade out and kicked the keegan over before striking again, severing the neck the rest of the way.
Gotta be sure.
From the back of the corpse, he spotted a smoking hole in the madman’s shoulder, and glanced up at Brett, who winked.
“Lasers!?” Jeb demanded.
“Lasers are cool,” Brett shouted back across the room with a shrug, before pouncing on his next victim.
Jeb hefted the sword, looking for the next threat, panting furiously, when his head began to pound.
Oh, shit, not now.
Jeb’s entire body began to cramp, his emotions running wild as he sank to his knees, clutching his head.
He’d just fulfilled his side of his Deal with Vresh.
The Deal favored her, didn’t it? Jeb thought. Why would I be getting Attribute Sickness from her not talking about me!?
Out of the corner of his eye, Jeb spotted Mr. Sophistication charging him, the melas literally breathing smoke, he was so pissed.
Jeb tried to raise the sword in time to block, but his muscles refused to respond, too busy pulling themselves painfully apart.
Thankfully, the black knight flickered up beside Mr. Sophistication and lopped the melas’s head off with a casual swing. The horned head tumbled past Jeb while the body slid to a halt in front of him.
“Cripples should hide behind the throne,” a familiar voice said as the ominous black helmet faded into thick smoke before vanishing.
“You’ve got
a ‘fro now,” Jeb said, looking up at Jess. Her hair was growing back in since the Tutorial, but being curly, it made a silly-looking poof around her head.
Jess’s eyes narrowed, and she clicked her tongue.
Jeb wasn’t going to make fun of her for it, though. His gaze flickered down to Razorback, the wicked-looking blade caked in blood.
Nope, definitely not going to make fun of her.
Jeb looked past her and noticed that every single noble in the room not wearing the colors of the emperor’s personal guard was lying in a puddle of their own blood.
The room fell silent.
“Now,” the emperor said, leaning forward in his seat, his voice cutting through the emptiness. “We have to decide what to do with you, Jebediah Trapper.”
Chapter 27: Aftermath
Jeb froze in front of the throne, feeling like a very small animal in front of a very large snake…with cheerful yellow plumage.
“Without this information, we wouldn’t have exposed this level of corruption in our local government, and for your help excising this tumor from my empire, I must thank you.”
The emperor stood, walking gracefully down to where Jeb was crouched—seemingly gliding down the steps, the way his legs held his body stable.
“I thank you,” he said, reaching out and putting his hands near Jeb’s neck.
Jeb’s breath caught for an instant before the kitri’s claws squished through the hinge on his collar like a soft cheese. A moment later, it fell away from his neck and clattered to the floor.
Jeb immediately used Myst to cinch down on his finger stub, stopping the bleeding.
“Get this man a coat!” the emperor said. “We can’t let Solmnath’s protector carry on in shame!”
A coat was hustled over to where the two of them stood, and Jeb accepted it gratefully, as well as the hand up. Jeb wrapped the coat around himself, glad for its length as the emperor pulled Jeb into a human-looking handshake with his good hand, albeit strangely awkward and from the wrong angle.
He was shaking hands with Jeb, but his body was turned to the side, away from Jeb. Jeb frowned at this, glancing up at the emperor, who wasn’t even looking at him—he was looking at the throne.
