Mist of Shadows
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Dungeon Myst Part 13
🕑 Added 2023-09-30 04:29:13 +0000 UTC"Is this what Snyder felt like all the time?" Buffy asked thoughtfully as she watched the horde of gremlins running down the hallways of the cobbled together school like children on a sugar high.
"Probably," Xander agreed as he pulled his attention away from the gremlin that was drawing a crude drawing on the wall with a black marker and focused on the gremlin that was trying to climb up a banner to get to one of the torches set into the wall. "I'm surprised the school doesn't have a hall monitor."
"Or a janitor," Willow grumbled as she walked over to where the group was standing. "The bathroom is filthy and has toilet paper everywhere."
"Fucking gremlins," Vivian grumbled, making a mental note to have Myst sort through the list of students and figure out which of them had prank related spells that could have conjured the filth and the toilet paper. "They don't have to eat, they shouldn't even need to use the bathroom."
"They're chaos demons, what were you expecting?" Dawn asked, a bit surprised that her sister hadn't already snapped and drop kicked one of the little shits.
"I was hoping for a bathroom that didn't look like a medieval truck stop," Willow complained as the gremlin climbing the banner jumped up and grabbed the torch.
"Would be nice," Vivian agreed as she picked up a marble that someone had left on the ground and tossed it at the gremlin trying to pull the torch off the wall.
"You missed!" the gremlin taunted. "I'm going to set you on fire."
"Do you want some help?" Buffy asked as she picked up an eraser off the floor.
"Sure," Vivian agreed. "Try not to kill him, we need all of the magic users we can get."
"No problem," Buffy replied as she tossed the eraser, hitting right in front of the gremlin and causing it to jump backwards.
The gremlin conjured a baseball sized sphere of water as he spun around to scream at the person that had tried to kill him and froze when he saw Buffy. "Shit!"
"No playing with fire in the hallway," Buffy told the gremlin, ready to dodge in case he tossed the ball of water at her.
"No kill!" the gremlin turned and bolted for his next class, leaving the ball of water to collapse on the floor.
"Can you teach me how to do that?" Vivian asked hopefully.
"It just takes practice," Buffy assured her, not seeing a point in mentioning that the agility from being a slayer made it easy.
Tara covered her mouth with her arm as she yawned.
"We should probably get some sleep," Willow admitted reluctantly, wishing she could take a couple of classes.
"They'll still be here in the morning," Vivian assured Willow as she turned and headed for the exit.
Xander glanced at a pair of gremlins that were working on sawing through a table leg. "Unless the gremlins burn it down."
"I'll take my chances, it's mostly stone," Vivian replied with amusement. 'Worst case, Myst can always rebuild the school.'
"Do you think the inn has a shower or a bath?" Willow asked hopefully, feeling like scrubbing herself clean after the day she'd had.
"If not we can grab a watering can and heat it up with magic so you can take a shower," Vivian offered as she opened the front door of the school.
"Let me guess, you're willing to hold the can?" Xander asked as they left the school, causing Willow to poke his ribs with her finger.
"Hey," Willow complained, wishing her magical girl transformation didn't increase her libido because that actually sounded kinda fun.
"Of course," Vivian replied with a grin, "I'm a very helpful girl."
"Does that include foot massages?" Buffy asked hopefully. “I’ve had a very stressful day.”
"I’ll listen to your woes while doing it and I'll even toss in the occasional 'That Bitch is crazy' for you," Vivian offered, having noticed how tense Buffy was.
"Fantastic," Buffy replied, looking forward to relaxing a bit after the last couple of weeks of stressing out over her mother's health and Glory. 'Maybe Mom was right, I need a vacation before I accidentally stab someone that walks up behind me.'
'I might need to ask her for suggestions on how to seduce Xander,' Dawn mused as they made their way across the twisting bridge. "Does the school teach levitation?"
Vivian tried to focus on the bridge and not the fact that they were a thousand feet above the ocean. "Not that I know of but I haven't had a chance to compare notes so there's a chance that someone has a levitation spell or a spell to slow your fall. Myst should be able to tell us when he gets finished harvesting stone."
Willow twitched as the bridge in front of her twisted into a continually moving uneven S shape, making her extremely happy about the handrails and the magic effect that kept everything steady. "You'd be able to hold off a small army with a couple of guards and a dozen archers."
"The archers would need cover, it's too close to the main platform," Xander argued as they continued across the bridge, trying not to worry about the bridge suddenly deciding to twist sideways and drop them to their death while setting the world’s record for the highest belly flop.
Buffy glanced back at the platform that was slowly moving down. "I could probably clear the distance if I was in my magic girl form."
"Assuming the platform didn't lurch." Dawn sighed in relief when she stepped off the bridge and onto the platform. "That's going to take some getting used to."
"It should be easier in the morning," Xander lied as he followed Vivian onto the platform, fairly sure it would be worse because they'd be able to see everything clearly.
"We're alive, that's the important bit," Vivian teased as she headed towards the inn with a spring in her steps, looking forward to seducing the group.
Willow glared at the gremlin that was making rude gestures towards the group then followed the rest of the group. "Hopefully the gremlins haven't trashed the inn."
"I might have to drop kick them," Buffy admitted as they got closer to the two story stone building with a brightly painted wooden sign over the front door. "Colour Inn?"
"Maybe it's British?" Xander joked.
"No clue," Vivian admitted as she walked over to the door.
"Maybe it's like an Irish pub…" Dawn trailed off as Vivian opened the door revealing a room with poster-covered stone walls and half a dozen mismatched wooden tables along with several out of place lawn chairs and a couple of lava lamps sitting on the tables providing a halfway decent amount of illumination.
Buffy slipped past her sister, walked into the inn and froze when she saw sections of the walls that had been covered with neon wallpaper in a way that hurt to look at. "I've seen vampire dens with more taste."
"It can't be that…" Xander trailed off as he followed her inside and saw a poster of a fat hairy man fucking a morbidly obese alien woman that looked like Jaba the Hutt with watermellon sized breasts. "What the fuck?!"
Vivian winced as she walked in and saw the poster on the wall that Xander and Buffy were staring at. "That's got to go."
Tara winced as she followed the rest of the group in and saw the poster. "There's a place for all types of art but…" she trailed off as she couldn't come up with an excuse for the disgusting poster.
"That's nasty," Dawn complained, wondering if there was enough alcohol on the wall to forget the poster.
"Ardeat pictura," Xander chanted as he gestured at the offensive poster, causing it to catch fire and turn to ash, leaving a clear spot on the stone wall.
Willow blinked a couple of times, wishing she had the supplies needed to erase the poster from her memory. "Much better."
"Yep," Vivian agreed as she glanced around the empty lobby. "Hello?"
"Anyone here?" Dawn asked as she walked over to the door to the kitchen and took a look inside. "I don't think anyone is here."
Tara pulled her attention off the garishly decorated wall and focused on Dawn. "Myst probably hasn't assigned an innkeeper yet."
"Or they killed themselves when they saw the place," Xander offered.
"Now what?" Buffy asked as she glanced towards the stairs, wondering if they should check the second floor or just wait for Myst.
"I figure we'll give Myst ten to twenty minutes to show up, then we steal the keys to a room and get a nap, I doubt he'd care." Vivian smiled when she saw a pair of chairs that were facing each other across a coffee table. She walked over and flopped down on the surprisingly comfortable chair that faced the lobby. "Take a seat and give me your feets, they needs attention."
Buffy laughed as she walked over and sat down in the chair. She took her shoes and socks off then placed her right foot in Vivian's lap, doing her best to ignore the fact that her magic girl transformation didn't come with panties and her skirt wasn't long enough to conceal her bits.
Vivian gave Buffy a smile then started working on massaging Buffy's foot, 'sneaking' the occasional look at Buffy's pussy.
"Poker?" Xander asked the rest of the girls as he pulled a deck of cards out of his pocket.
Willow shook her head. "We don't have chips."
"We have clothes," Dawn pointed out ‘innocently’, not actually expecting Willow or Tara to go for it.
"We're not playing strip poker in an abandoned inn," Willow argued, trying to ignore the fact that she really wouldn't mind everyone here ending up naked.
'Not a chance Dawn,' Xander thought as he started shuffling, figuring they could play a couple of hands while they waited for Myst.
Tara smiled at Dawn over Willow's shoulder. "It wouldn't be fair, my dress is one piece."
"On second thought, we're on vacation," Willow said as she walked over and sat down next to Xander.
"I'm in!" Dawn said enthusiastically as she sat down at the table across from Xander before they could change their minds.
"How exactly does the betting work because I'm not playing if I only have a single round," Tara said as she sat down next to Dawn.
"That's a good point. Let's ignore the usual ante, that way you don't lose anything just to get your cards and dresses count as two items," Xander suggested as he dealt the cards, not noticing the trickle of magic coming from the cards as he dealt.
"If you bet part of your dress and lose, you need to drop the top or pull it up," Dawn added with a lecherous smile, looking forward to seeing more of everyone.
"Stop corrupting my sister," Buffy teased when she turned and saw her sister's smile, knowing that Dawn was already a lost cause, mostly because of slayer hearing and Dawn not being as quiet as she thought when she muttered her thoughts out loud to herself.
"More like the other way around," Xander joked as he picked up his cards. 'Full house, that's a fantastic start, at least they saw me shuffle.'
"I'm trying," Dawn replied cheerfully, wondering the best way to get everyone to bet it all so that everyone ended up naked.
"Do shoes count as one or two items?" Tara asked as she picked up her cards. She stared at her cards, wondering about the odds of getting dealt a flush.
"Two," Willow suggested as she looked at her cards. 'Straight, nice.'
"That leaves the girls with six items if you count our socks and Xander with seven," Dawn pointed out. 'Pair of aces, not a bad start.'
"Xander has to count his shoes as one item to drop his available items to six," Willow argued.
"That's fair," Xander agreed, not seeing a problem with making things fair, especially since he had a nice hand.
0o0o0
Myst sighed in frustration when he climbed out of the well and a notice appeared on his HUD informing him that several unruly students had caused damage to the school. He pulled up the menu for the school and stared at the map covered in translucent red patches. He glanced over notes for each of the highlighted sections. 'Graffiti, traps, trash, damage to a table that could collapse and kill a gremlin and they basically wrecked the bathrooms badly enough the system considers them unusable.'
'So much for trying to manage the insanity,' Myst mused as he tapped the note that suggested possible solutions, causing a small window with options to appear. 'Build Detention Center? Research cleaning spell, fifty mana? Hire a janitor from town for ten gold? Just as well it's grayed out. That leaves building a detention center or researching a spell. 'Center for dealing with delinquent behavior, available options depend on the staff. That's either extremely useful or completely useless while the cleaning spell can be used anywhere.'
Myst tapped the option to research the spell, causing the option to gray out and a progress bar to appear over it. 'Huh, I was expecting the rest of the options to vanish.' He selected the option for the detention center, using twenty units of stone and ten units of iron and getting a new tab for dealing with the students, creating yet another progress bar.
He flew over to the walled area while he waited for the progress bar to fill up. He stared at the thick mist that was creeping up towards the top of the wall for a couple of seconds then flew over the wall and started casting his spell to create rabbits, knowing the rabbits would absorb the mist.
He spent a couple of minutes repeatedly casting his spell until he could see the blood stained ground and the small army of slimes that the humanoid slime was eating. He used his possession ability on the 'ex-slime' then spent a couple of minutes collecting the crystals that generated the mist so he wouldn't have to worry about it. He opened his workshop and queued up another twenty gremlins then spent the rest of his mana expanding the platform the school was connected to.
He smiled when the progress bar for his detention center completely filled and a new tab appeared. He opened the new tab and looked at his available list of ways to deal with the problematic students, hoping for something useful.
'Torture students with fire? Alchemical Help? Test to destruction? Mortal combat?' He skimmed over the option to torture the students with fire as he flew over the gap between platforms. 'It has a twenty percent chance of removing a negative behavior trait and a sixty percent chance of giving the student pyrophobia, assuming the student survives the experience? Not to mention it causes horrible scars? Twenty three percent chance to survive?'
He sighed when he double checked the description and saw the part about killing the problematic student reducing the chance of the rest of the students causing trouble for the next week by fifty percent. 'Okay, that's probably worth it in a couple of cases, especially if the gremlins are stupid.'
Myst shook his head and headed for the inn, fairly sure the twisted options were a result of the school's dark arts specialion. 'Testing a student to destruction can result in better ways to motivate or terrorize the remaining students, it can also result in finding a use for the student's remains or possibly a way to improve students of the same species.'
"I'd rather just extract the magic…" he trailed off as he realized that he might actually have a use for that option. 'What happens if I run some tests on magic using skeletons, would the research apply to every skeleton? It's probably worth running some tests once I get enough students to waste the magic crystals or if one of the skeletons ends up with magic.'
'Worry about it later,' Myst told himself as he read the description for the mortal combat option, 'Toss the annoying student into the arena and let them fight to the death against a randomly generated monster or against another student. The mana cost depends on the quality of the student that I'm sending and it gets more expensive if they're fighting multiple monsters in a row but the prizes are better. Of course, the chances of them dying increases the more matches they have to fight without a break.'
He glanced at the description for the student vs student fights. 'Yeah, that's pointless, I'd make more than twenty gold just selling the crystals that can give people magic and their deaths only keep the rest of the students in line for two days, rather than a week from being burned to death,' he mused as he landed in front of the inn.
'Drugging your students until they behave or melt is a time honored tradition? Bullshit, there's no way a thirty percent reduction in their learning speed is worth a forty percent decrease in their chance to cause mischief, not when it costs five gold a day. I'd rather just torch a skeleton or one of the useless gremlins, it's a lot cheaper,' Myst complained as he opened the door.
"I win," Dawn said cheerfully as she laid her cards down on the table, showing four kings and a joker.
"Pretty sure you don't," Tara teased as she set her cards down, showing off her royal straight flush.
"How the fuck?!" Dawn complained as Myst walked in. "You drew three cards."
"Just lucky I guess," Tara replied with amusement.
'Huh.' Myst glanced between the naked people sitting at the table then glanced over at where Vivian was giving a naked Willow a foot massage. He glanced at where a naked Buffy was sitting by the fireplace carving a stake then focused on the two people at the table that still had some clothes on, namely Dawn who still had her dress on and Tara who had her dress half off which gave everyone a nice view of her breasts. "Having fun?"
Dawn glanced over at Myst. "I'd be having more with some root beer floats or food to celebrate but yeah, I almost won."
"You got second place and a naked Xander, I'd say you won," Myst replied with amusement as he walked over to the table.
"True," Dawn agreed as she pulled her dress down and off, leaving her naked. "What do you think?" she asked Xander.
"Pretty sure everyone won," Xander offered with a smile, intentionally misinterpreting her question.
Dawn stuck her tongue out at Xander but didn't comment, pleased with the way he’d been unable to stop himself from admiring her.
Myst pulled the frost covered ice cream squash out of his storage and set it on the table. "Give me a minute and I'll grab some root beer."
Xander stared at the squash when he realized it was covered in frost. "What's with the squash?"
"It's filled with chocolate ice cream," Myst replied as he turned and looked at Buffy. "Can we borrow your knife?"
"Nope but I'll cut the squash," Buffy replied cheerfully as she headed over to carve into the weird ice cream container.
"Thanks," Myst replied as he gave Buffy a once over. "I'll grab the root beer. Can someone hit the slime beast with a lightsaber?"
"Yes," Tara replied as she grabbed her lightsaber off her belt and ignited it, creating a green blade of plasma.
"There should be some glasses in the kitchen," Dawn said as she headed for the kitchen.
Myst took a couple of steps away from the table and cast his food conjuration spell, creating half a dozen two liter bottles of root beer of various types on the table and creating a slime beast in front of him.
Tara stepped forward and cut the slime beast in half, causing it to vanish before the top half could hit the stone floor and her breasts to bounce a bit with the movement. "That has to be annoying."
"I'll be glad when the curse wears off," Myst agreed, tired of worrying about his mana overflowing and causing issues even if the extra mana regeneration was nice. "Speaking of magic, can I bribe someone to let me scan their magic girl necklaces so I can see if I can copy one?"
"Sure," Xander replied as he took his necklace off and set it on the table, knowing he had the weakest magic girl item of the group so it probably wouldn't matter that much if he managed to copy it. "Willow hasn't had a lot of luck making one that lets me turn into a guy."
"Any reason?" Myst asked as he focused on the necklace and opened his enchanting menu.
Willow turned to look at Myst. "They're basically relics from an ancient culture that lived on the Moon or the magic user that wrote the book was high as a kite, the best anyone has managed to create are knock-offs and they don't work nearly as well."
"Give me a second, this should make another slime beast," Myst warned Tara, wanting to make sure it didn't hurt anyone.
"I'm ready," Tara replied as she mentally opened her character sheet so she could check her lightsaber skill.
Myst hit the button to nondestructively study Xander's necklace and smiled when he got a useful, if expensive pattern for a transformation item. "I can see where making them would be annoying, it takes five hundred mana for a basic item that transforms someone into a magic girl."
"Basic?" Buffy asked as she started cutting the top of the squash so she could get to the ice cream.
"It covers a basic boost to your physical stats, durability, ability to jump and land safely along with a basic transformation sequence and storage for your gear while you're transformed."
"Can you make something that lets me stay male?" Xander asked hopefully.
"Doesn't look like it but I might have a workaround," Myst mused as Dawn walked out of the kitchen with a wooden tray filled with glass mugs and spoons. He pulled a silver ring that one of the gremlins had found in one of the dungeon's junk piles out of his storage and dropped it in the enchanting box. "This should make another slime."
"Ready," Tara assured him, rather happy about the lightsaber experience she was getting.
Myst tossed ten mist crystals into the box so that he'd get something warped and hit the button, creating an unstable magic transformation item and a slime beast.
Tara cut the slime beast in half. "Did it work?"
Myst stared at the ring's description. "For a given value of work."
"Cursed?" Xander asked.
"No, just weird. The ring transforms the user into a mutated humanoid with supernatural strength and reduces their agility by five points. It also randomly changes one of your supernatural abilities or defensive abilities into a different ability while active."
Buffy scrunched up her nose. "I'll stick with my necklace."
"I can't say I blame you," Myst replied as he selected the option that let him nondestructively test the ring. "One more slime then I'll stop and we can eat ice cream."
"You're fine," Tara assured him, "they're giving me a decent amount of lightsaber experience."
"Cool," Myst replied as he hit the button and spent the mana, getting several unlocks for his magic transformation item pattern and creating yet another slime beast.
Tara cut the slime beast in half. "Does that mean you could keep activating it until you get something useful?"
"It mentions something about the abilities being constant though which ability selected is random so I doubt it," Myst explained as he slipped the ring on his right ring finger. "I'm not sure if this will create a slime or not. "Atlantis!" he chanted, activating the ring and changing into a hideously scarred humanoid with a two foot long lobster claw where his left hand should have been and eyestalks sticking out of his head which bounced in a way that made him queasy.
Dawn stared at Myst for a couple of seconds then started laughing. "You look like something out of an old B movie."
"Are you still acidic or male?" Xander asked.
"Shit!" Myst cursed and quickly transformed back when his skin started burning. "I think he lost his acid immunity for a second."
"That sounds unpleasant," Vivian offered as she let go of Willow's foot.
"Yeah, let's try that again. Atlantis," Myst chanted, changing back into a twisted monster. He sighed in relief when he realized that he wasn't in pain. He opened his host's character sheet and looked at his abilities. "Second time's the charm. It swapped the acid for Healing Hugs."
"As in you can heal people by hugging them?" Dawn asked, fairly sure no one would want to get hugged by that monster.
"It's not particularly quick but it's better than melting everything I touch," Myst replied as he fed his host two of the special apples, permanently boosting the monster's intelligence and causing its head to swell in size.
"Are you okay?" Willow asked warily as she stared at Myst's head which was now the size of a small beach ball.
"More or less. I boosted the slime's intelligence. I want to see what stays when I change back," Myst explained as he pulled one of the cream pumpkins out of his storage and devoured it, turning his host into a rather cute and adorable orange kitten with a silver collar.
"You can turn into a cat and did you just eat an entire pumpkin?" Buffy asked.
"Yeah, the cream pumpkins turn things into kittens when you eat them raw," Myst explained as he looked at the kitten's stats, rather happy to find out that the slime still had all of his immunities. "Vivian, can you turn my host into a beastkin? I want to see if your transformation ability boosts the slime's intelligence."
"It should," Vivian replied as she focused on Myst and used her transformation power, changing him into a cute looking teenage male with orange cat ears and a long fluffy tail. "Nice."
"I'd rather get hugs from a cat boy than a crab man," Dawn agreed.
Vivian smiled at Myst. "Speaking of hugs, get over here. We need to cuddle if you want a twin."
"Let me grab some ice cream first," Myst replied as he started making a rootbeer float.
"Twin?" Dawn asked as she glanced between Myst and Vivian.
"One of my magic abilities lets me create quasi real twins of people provided that I've had sex with them or enough pleasurable physical contact," Vivian explained.
"Let me guess, foot massages count?" Buffy asked.
"Only if you enjoyed it," Vivian replied cheerfully.
Willow glanced at Tara, wondering what it would be like to have sex with twins.
"That's a yes," Buffy admitted.
"What do you mean by quasi real?" Dawn asked, wondering if having a twin would help her convince Xander to have sex with her.
"Basically, if you don't have sex with the clones they vanish after twenty four hours. If you have sex with them, they're permanent. It also gives you a permanent boost to your mana pool."
"How much of a boost?" Dawn asked.
"You get one hundred points per twin, but you can only get the boost twice which is probably tied to the fact that each person can only have two magical twins active," Vivian explained.
Tara glanced at Willow. "What do you think?"
"It's not cheating if you're there, right?" Willow asked hopefully.
"Not in this case," Tara assured her.
Buffy glanced between Willow and Tara. "Are you seriously considering having sex with your twins?"
"Yes," Willow admitted. "Two hundred mana would almost double my mana pool when I'm not transformed and I always wanted a sister. There are a couple of things I'd love to try that require multiple people and… I'm shutting up now!"
"Dish up the ice cream, we can make a list of pros and cons over ice cream," Xander suggested.
Myst poured some root beer on his ice cream then stuck a spoon in the mug and headed over to sit with Vivian.
"Am I the only sane person left?" Buffy asked.
"Don’t you want someone that knows what being a slayer is like?" Vivian asked as she moved over so that Myst could sit next to her.
"Make a list," Buffy muttered when she realized Vivian had a point.
