A pair of gnashing jaws slammed shut in front of the entrance, a hair’s breadth from his face.
Chapter 5: Necrobarter
Jeb let out a choked cry as Jessica flung him backwards into the tiny dungeon, charging out to meet the creature face-to-face.
Jeb landed on his ass right in the middle of the beam of light, triggering the magical swarm a second time. The Myst shot out of the ceiling, blinking like a strobe light, stirring the dust on the floor a bit, but not doing anything other than that.
Thank god I disarmed this thing, he thought, turning his gaze back to the ongoing fight.
Jessica was doing glorious battle with something that looked like a cross between an oriental dragon and a tapeworm, with huge, gnashing jaws that seemed to be primarily made of bone or chitin.
Jessica was executing magnificent midair maneuvers that boggled the mind until you recalled her class’s ability for operating at effective low-g.
The fight was swift and brutal, with the snake-like creature being cleaved in two in a matter of seconds, falling to the ground in two massive, bleeding chunks.
The creature’s jaw was still trying to bite down on something , weakly opening and closing, even though the creature’s eyes were already devoid of light.
“The fuck is that?” Jeb asked, getting to his feet and peering out the door. the whole thing must have been thirty feet long, a great white shark/eel on land.
“It’s a wandering monster. We saw some of them hanging around the World Tortoise once,” She said. “This one must have been level fifteen or so.” She said, kicking the creature.
“Parasites,” Jeb said.
“Huh?”
“Parasites. They live on the world tortoise. Going up there and trying to kill the thing is like kicking a wasp’s nest the size of a football field.”
“Ah. How do you know that?”
“Mystical powers,” Jeb said, waggling his fingers. He glanced over his shoulder at the dungeon they had just left.
He absolutely would love to take the rest of the guts of the trap. If he could secure the power source along with the repeater and trigger mechanism, he could probably make some kind of Mystical machine gun.
Alas, Jeb wasn’t capable of cutting through solid rock with his mind – yet – and they only had three days before there would be no safe place to sleep. They needed to spend all of that time achieving a basic level of self-sufficiency, not spend days trying to chisel stone for a maybe.
Still, Jeb glanced at his map, scanning the land to the deep west. In the flaming mountains, the fairies had spotted a fire lens. Magical laser gun would be pretty bitchin’.
It’ll go on the list if we get good enough to go there, otherwise, it’s superfluous. I also need to learn more about Myst and lenses.
Between the boss monster, and exploring the local map, he needed some time to rest and do a little research.
***3 days, 1 hour until Safe Zone Removal***
“You may look at the map,” Jeb said, holding it out for Jessica.
She narrowed her eyes, but the circumstances of their meeting didn’t exactly give Jeb full confidence in her. If she wanted to track down one or two treasures and bring them back while he rested, great! but giving her the map so she could potentially ditch him for a better outfit?
They didn’t know each other that well.
“Okay, it’s memorized,” she said, nodding. “Thanks.”
“Ah crap, Nerve.”
“Nerve,” she said, tapping her skull. “I’ll be back in two hours if I’m still alive. I’ll be looking for the Shielding Bracers, and the Vivicant Cane.” She poked two spots near their safe zone.
She looked him up and down. “You could use a cane.”
“Ay, get outta here,” Jeb said, waving her off. Freakin’ Nerve.
It was somewhat emasculating to be outclassed, mentally.
On the other hand, I can move things with my mind.
There was really no putting a price tag on that.
Once Jess was gone, Jeb called Acorn down to haggle. Now that they were in the nesting phase, he was forced to get more creative, eventually selling a bit of the silk liner of his brigandine for the information he was looking for.
“What is a Myst lens, and why do we need them?” he asked Acorn.
“A Myst lens converts one form of Myst to another. They’re integral to wizardry in general. Myst lenses coalesce in areas that are filled with the memory of their focus.
“Sunny places make sunny lenses, watery ones, make watery ones, and so on?” Jeb asked. He was pretty sure that was the case given the positioning of the worm one and the fire one on his map, but confirmation was good.
“Yes! Exactly!” Acorn shouted pointing at him. “The variety of lenses in the world is practically infinite. There are so many that haven’t been discovered yet, and even between similar lenses, there are variations. The sunny lens you spoke of, there are dappled ones and ones that carry the scent of freshly mown grass. At public servant exams, you can find studying lenses and ulcer lenses taking the form of erasers. There’s practically no limit. The only issue is that the rarer Lenses take a higher Myst to identify as magical.”
“So is it possible to cast a spell without using one of these?”
Acorn stared at him for a moment, his jaw slack. “Your core is set. Of course it’s not possible.”
“Explain.”
Acorn heaved a huge sigh and rolled his eyes, as if Jeb was the slowest kid in the race.
“When you develop a Myst Core,” he said, flying down to tap on Jeb’s sternum. “The Myst you process settles into the form of your most ideal magic. After it is set, you cannot change it.”
“So, since I thought telekinesis was cool, that’s what it settled on?”
“Pretty much.”
