Mist of Shadows
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Dragon King Part 15
🕑 Added 2022-09-27 02:44:56 +0000 UTC"Where's Constantine when you need him?" Myst muttered as he spent the mana to upgrade the hastily completed protection circle he'd scrawled on the waygate landing, turning it into something that might help against the Black Wind. "In DC, probably fucking Zatanna or selling his soul to a demon."
Myst opened his gacha menu and looked at his choices, 'Artifact of corruption, potion of change, twisted servant, creepy magical building, cursed crown, cursed jewelry? Is my menu reacting to the world or is it just coincidence?'
'Worry about it later,' Myst told himself as he twisted some mana into a hubcap sized funnel that connected to the artifact of corruption wheel with a garden hose size tube. 'Moment of truth.' He twisted the mana in the funnel to start pulling the tainted magic in the air into the funnel, down the tube of mana that condensed the wisps of dark magic/essence into something more solid and into the wheel.
He scowled when he noticed that his mana funnel was quickly picking up black spots and seemed to be rotting, edging closer to his metaphorical 'fingers' and making him shiver. "Plan B," he muttered as he started adding more mana to the outside and letting the bits of corrupted mana flake off and get pulled into the swirling sludge that was being pulled into his gacha wheel.
Myst spent a couple of minutes tossing mana at the funnel, trying to stay ahead of the black splotches and rot while refining his technique before he sort of got the hang of it. He was fairly sure he'd already spent enough mana on containing the dark magic to buy the artifact wheel or at least he was fairly sure he would by the time the wheel was filled.
'This is going to take forever at this point and the Black Wind is going to find me.' He scanned his surroundings, never happier for his ability to see through magical darkness as it let him see a decent distance. 'Can I make something that's larger or more complicated? Is it worth the headache?' he mused as he extended the funnel and made it larger and longer, increasing the amount of mana he needed to burn to keep everything from getting corrupted and falling apart. 'Annoying but it's not any harder to keep track of.'
'That increased the rate it's filling, which means I should probably start worrying about it overflowing when the wheel starts spinning,' he mused as he created a large water tank style construct out of mana around the garden hose part of the funnel. He added a hose to each gacha wheel and connected them to the hose inside the water tank, hoping it would let him break the connections and catch the overflow without letting the toxic magic sludge eat through the landing he was standing on.
'Okay, now I just have to increase the amount of magic that I'm pulling in without getting corrupted. Corruption resistance. Robots? Ablative armor? That could work,' he mused, realizing that he didn't have to control everything, just get things moving in the right direction.
Myst spent twenty seconds shoring up all of his mana constructs then pushed mana out into the air a hundred feet in front of the funnel, creating a large cloud of purple sparkles. He imprinted his will on the mana then quickly cut the connection and watched his cloud of mana start pulling on the surrounding magic in the air, turning black and wild as it lurched towards the funnel, his orders mixing with the tainted magic's desire to corrupt and consume.
Myst felt a brief moment of triumph as the cloud of mana created a vortex and the funnel started pulling in more tainted magic before he had to start sealing the hoses to the various gacha wheels as they started spinning as the tainted sludge quickly filled them up. He shivered as some of the sludge splashed on the landing and started eating it when his artifact of corrupt wheel started spinning and he had to dump the sludge into the holding tank while he refreshed his gacha wheels by closing the menu and opening it.
He quickly created hoses that connected the funnel to the new gacha wheels. 'This is going to take forever at this rate. As the Toolman would say, more power!' He smiled as he opened his upgrade menu, mentally selected the rate the funnel was pulling the Dark One's power out of the air and spent enough mana to power a city for a week in the blink of an eye, causing the rate the funnel was pulling in power to skyrocket.
Everything became a bit of a blur for the next fifty seven seconds as he connected and cut hoses and refreshed his gacha almost continuously, barely even reading them before hooking everything up. It wasn't until he felt the wind on his face and one of the gacha wheels floating in front of him started slowing down that he cut his connection to his mana constructs and bolted back through the waygate.
Myst staggered as he left the waygate and an arrow hit him in his chest and shattered, not so much because it hurt but because he hadn't been expecting it. He gestured and blasted the man that looked a bit like Lan with lightning without giving it a second thought then blinked forward and shoved the half dead bastard into his spatial ring.
He scanned the surrounding area for trouble then took a breath and tried to get his heart rate under control. 'How the fuck did he manage to find me that fast! Or was he here because Fain vanished and the trollocs died to something weird? Bad luck on his part?'
Myst turned and looked at the dark portal where the waygate was, fairly sure there was a cloud of shadows where his circle of protection was. "Wasn't expecting that to work," he muttered as his artifact of corruption wheel dropped a wooden drum that filled him with unease a second before his building wheel lurched to a stop and a thirteen story circular black stone tower appeared out of thin air in front of him like it had always been there.
Myst glanced at the stone landing in front of the metal door set into the tower then glanced up at the metal plaque over the door. "Turre Veneficii? Is that Latin, maybe Italian?"
"Figure it out later," he muttered as he turned around and looked at the drum, checking it with his upgrade ability. 'A non-demon playing the drum will turn everyone within a hundred feet that can hear the drum into a demon?'
'Fuck that,' Myst thought as he blinked over to the drum and quickly shoved it in his inventory, wanting to make sure it didn't fall into the wrong hands if someone showed up to kill him and he had to run. He jumped and almost blasted a mangled blonde girl that dropped from the twisted servant gacha, mostly because she was missing half of her face and her left arm. 'Yeah, pretty sure I should avoid buying gacha wheels in the Blight.'
The girl staggered forward then fell over without making a sound as her left leg gave out as it seemed to be missing a knee cap and critical bones to make things work.
Myst reached down and shoved the messed up girl into his spatial ring to deal with later as most of his gacha wheels started slowing down. 'I might have overdone it,' he mused as he started catching things with his telekinesis, doing his best not to have a repeat of the artifact of change that had brought him to the world.
Myst glanced at the collection of odds and ends that he'd set on the ground then started the slightly annoying process of sticking them in his inventory with telekinesis, wanting to make sure he had everything squared away if Ishamael showed up to kill him but not wanting to touch things without checking everything either.
Myst sighed in relief as he finished stashing everything in his inventory other than a crystal vial filled with a blue liquid without anyone jumping out at him. He checked the potion with his upgrade ability. 'Potion of Change: Turns the drinker into a house elf, erasing their memories but not their knowledge and binding them to serve the first person they see.'
"I should probably avoid telling Hermione about that," Myst muttered as he picked up the potion and stuck it in his inventory.
'Avoid telling her what?' Laurena asked with telepathy, wanting to give Myst a chance to realize she was in the area before she dropped her invisibility and got a blast of lightning to the face.
Myst spun around and scanned the area, trying to figure out where the voice was coming from before he realized it was in his head and familiar. "At this rate, I'm going to need a vacation from my vacation."
Laurena dropped her invisibility and stepped away from the tree she'd been leaning against watching the show. "Wouldn't hurt."
"How long have you been here?" Myst asked as he reached out with his telepathy and checked the area to check if anyone else was hiding, a bit annoyed that he'd forgotten.
"A couple of minutes. I didn't want to disturb you in the middle of your experiment so I opened a portal to the ruins and walked," Laurena replied as she walked over. "Did you get anything nice beyond a creepy tower?"
"Let me check…" Myst trailed off as he glanced back at the tower and noticed the fog surrounding the bottom of the tower. "That's new, five points for style," he muttered as he checked the tower with his upgrade ability. "Studying in the tower boosts the rate of learning magical skills and spells by 200% percent, sleeping in the tower provides pleasant if occasionally lustful dreams and protects your dreams from outside influence. Indestructible testing chambers for all your spell casting needs along with soundproofed workshops that increase skill gain by 500%. The tower is also larger on the inside and always has enough room for students and teaching staff. It's always surrounded by fog for aesthetic reasons."
"How much did you spend on that?" Laurena asked, looking forward to checking the place out.
"Enough to burn a city to ash," Myst replied cheerfully as he started looking over the items he'd picked up from his project. "Oh, hey, I have a cursed crown that allows you to silence a target but temporarily turns you into a vampire."
"Might be worth testing on a cultist to see if they pick up any interesting spells or abilities," Laurena mused.
"I also have a crown that makes you smarter but permanently turns you into a ghoul, might be interesting to compare the two," Myst said as he glanced over the next couple of items he'd picked up. "Oh joy, a necklace that permanently increases the wearer's strength and destroys their hearing," he said sarcastically.
"That's useful if you can fix the hearing loss or if you can copy the strength quality after we test it on a cultist," Laurena argued.
Myst shook his head, trying to keep a straight face and failing. "You just want to test dangerous magical items on cultists."
"What else are they good for?" Laurena asked with amusement.
"Loot?" Myst asked as he checked a crystal spear. "I have a spear that creates a force field over your nose and mouth, giving you the ability to breathe underwater and making you immune to gas attacks while you hold it."
Laurena pulled her attention off the tower and looked at Myst. "What's the downside?"
"You temporarily change into a goblin while holding it," Myst replied with amusement.
"Might be worth testing, especially if you can upgrade the goblins into something you can copy abilities from," Laurena mused.
"Worth checking. Neat, some of the curses are actually useful," Myst said enthusiastically as he flagged the ring as useful so it would be easier to find.
"How useful?" Laurena asked.
"The ring increases the user's bravery and permanently turns them into a werewolf which should let us copy their resistance to normal weapons," Myst replied cheerfully.
"Assuming they have any," Laurena mused, thinking about the worgen.
"True," Myst admitted as he looked at the next item in his inventory. "Huh, a cheap looking mug that changes anything you pour into it into cheap ale."
"Can you upgrade that to something useful?" Laurena asked hopefully.
"Like everclear or something you could use to disinfect things? Probably," Myst replied, intentionally misunderstanding what she was suggesting. "Oh, I got a scarab brooch that creates a ward against bugs."
"Any curses?" Laurena asked, looking forward to duplicating the scarab as the quality of the local inns left something to be desired.
"None," Myst replied as he flagged the brooch as useful. "And a cat figurine that makes purring sounds when sunlight hits it."
"We should probably hand that to Dawn to see if she can reverse engineer the enchantment, especially if we can change the sound," Laurena mused, wondering if they could set things up to play music.
Myst grinned when he looked at the next item. "A cloak made of forest leaves and shadows that the tailors should probably study to see if they can learn something. Oh, goggles that let you see an aura around people with magic potential, that would make tracking down people that can channel easier."
"Especially if we can duplicate them," Laurena agreed.
Myst smiled when he saw a silver hairpin with a tree of life on the end of it like his father used to make when he was still making jewelry. "Nice, I have a hairpin that functions as an angreal and keeps your hair from tangling or getting dirty."
Laurena smiled as she thought about how useful the hairpin would have been running around the wilderness. "We're going to need to figure out how to duplicate that, how powerful is the angreal part?"
"Weak enough that I doubt Moiraine could match Egwene once she hits her full power but that might make it easier to duplicate and I should be able to upgrade them," Myst mused as he flagged the hairpin as useful. He looked at the next item and grinned when he read the description. "A fist sized chunk of crystal that's nearly weightless, that should be useful for making a flying fortress."
Laurena shook her head. "That sounds like an excellent way to get blasted out of the air by hostile forces."
"We should probably table the idea until we deal with Ishamael," Myst admitted as he flagged the crystal as useful, not particularly interested in making flying targets when Ishamael could destroy heartstone. "A shield that pulses with illusionary magma, if we can replicate that, we could enchant the castle."
Laurena snickered as she thought about some of the nobles that would piss themselves in fear if they had to walk into such a room to deal with Myst sitting on a burning throne. "You're having too much fun."
"I'm trying…" Myst trailed off as he saw the next item. "Do you ever have those days when you're really happy you're a paranoid bastard?"
"All the time, why?" Laurena asked, thinking of some of the traps she'd evaded over the years because she'd double checked something.
"Because I have a cursed bowling ball that turns anything it strikes into fish and we have a trapped abomination," Myst said as he pulled the cursed bowling ball out of his inventory with telekinesis then tossed it through the waygate and across the circle of protection that was trapping the Black Wind, causing the swirling nightmare of an entity to change into a flesh and blood rainbow colored fish and flop to the stone walkway as thousands of tattered souls burst out of its flesh.
"Did you just kill the Black Wind?" Laurena asked in surprise, having heard about the supposedly unkillable creature from Dawn.
"No clue," Myst admitted as he watched the army of translucent souls vanish as the magic keeping them in the mortal realm failed, surprised that his crazy idea had actually worked. "Give me a minute."
"You're going in there?" Laurena asked warily.
"I need to check something," Myst replied as he stepped through the ways and looked at the dead fish with his upgrade ability. 'Black Fish of Madness: Status Dead.' He used telekinesis to float the fish over and drop it in an inventory slot, not seeing a point in leaving it to corrupt the area as it rotted or spontaneously come back to life because the gods were feeling petty.
He looked at the pocket dimension with his upgrade ability. 'Corruption, damage… nothing about keeping shadowspawn out, shit!' he cursed as he realized there was nothing stopping Ishamael from sending an army through the Ways to kill everyone. 'So much for there being a fragment left that you could upgrade.'
'Take a breath, even if the Dark One noticed and told Ishamael, it's going to take a couple of days before he can gather a decent sized army and that would give the game away and it's not like he can't show up and obliterate cities any time he wants. Yeah, because that's not fucking depressing.'
Myst levitated his bowling ball back over, dropped it in his inventory and walked back out of the Ways, wanting to be out of the depressing pocket dimension.
"Is it dead?" Laurena asked hopefully.
"As a doornail, which means there's nothing stopping the Dark One from sending his armies through the waygates," Myst admitted.
"It also makes dealing with the corruption safer, you don't have to worry about having your soul ripped out," Laurena pointed out, trying to look at the positives.
"There's that," Myst agreed. "Now we just have to figure out how to find the waygates we need to ward or break before they send an army to wreck things."
"We might as well pull everyone in for a discussion." Laurena reached out with her telepathy and formed a mental chatroom with the girls and Myst. 'Myst screwed up and killed the Black Wind!'
'What! No, how the fuck did you manage that!' Dawn demanded, knowing the thing should have been nearly unkillable, with the possible exception of balefire.
'I hit it with a cursed bowling ball and turned it into a fish, which means the Dark One or his minions are free to send armies through the Ways. We're going to have to ward every gate in or near the Blight,' Myst explained.
'Would your automap ability label the destination of the waygates?' Dawn asked thoughtfully.
Myst mentally pulled up his map of the Ways and checked. 'My map lists the gate as leading to the Manetheren Ruins, but that might be because I know where it leads and I walked through the gate to get to the Ways.'
'Probably wouldn't hurt to fly around a bit and check,' Dawn mused.
Hermione cast dispel magic on the warded box sitting on Evanellein Sedai's desk and stuffed it in her spatial ring next to the owner. 'I'll send Verin a message, I still have forty three people on my list to grab before I'm done with the Black Ajah in the Tower and some of the warders have already noticed which means it's getting harder to move around.'
'Do you know any wards that would stop the shadowspawn from using the Ways?' Dawn asked hopefully.
'I know a couple wards against pests and ghouls, I'll have to run some tests,' Hermione replied as she walked over to Evanellein's shelf and started duplicating the books while she waited for her next target to finish her conversation with an Aes Sedai that wasn't a member of the Black Ajah.
'Let us know when you're done and back, Myst managed to get a couple of interesting trinkets cleaning up the Ways that we need to figure out how to duplicate,' Laurena said smugly.
'Trinkets are good. Is that because of luck or the type of energy?' Dawn asked thoughtfully.
'Or it might have something to do with the corrupted pocket dimension,' Myst offered as he walked towards the tower. 'We also picked up a really nice tower that's larger on the inside and cuts the time it takes to learn magical skills or spells by half and boosts the amount you learn while crafting in the workrooms.'
'Where did you stash that?' Zara asked, thinking of the amount the training boost would have helped while going to school.
Myst smiled as he opened the door and saw a lounge with black leather furniture and black and silver marble tile along with tables made out of some type of dark wood. The warm air as he stepped inside was a nice change from the brisk mountain air. He glanced between the glass stage off to the side then looked at the glass stairs going up to the second floor. 'Near the waygate where Manetheren used to be, just follow the quarry road then head south a bit and you'll probably see the valley and the tower.'
'I'll take a look once we finish looting the whitecloaks to the ground,' Zara promised.
'My target's alone, I need to go,' Hermione told them then dropped the link so she could concentrate on her target.
"How are the girls doing with the whitecloaks?' Laurena asked as she followed Myst inside the tower and looked around. "It needs some magical decorations and some whiteboards for messages."
Zara smiled as she watched another section of wall vanish from the Fortress of Light, she doubted it would last another twenty minutes at the rate the blue girls were cutting it apart and tossing it into spatial rings. 'They're like a swarm of invisible locusts, they're even cutting apart and looting the stone of their fortress.'
'Nice. Speaking of palaces, did you want to grab the princess and Elaida or do you want me to stick her in a box?' Dawn asked Myst, wanting to deal with Elaida before she could become a problem.
'That depends, are you going to put air holes in the box?' Myst asked as he headed towards the hallway, wanting to look at the dorms where the students would be staying provided they weren't a complete mess.
Dawn glanced at where Oberyn was teaching Mat a few moves with a spear. 'If she's dead, she can't suffer.'
'You should probably disguise yourself as her then be seen leaving after insulting someone you can get away with insulting,' Myst suggested as he glanced at the glowing red orbs mounted on the wall every ten feet that gave the long curved hallway a soft illumination that wouldn't screw with people's night vision all that much.
'Sounds like a plan,' Dawn agreed then dropped the link and went to find Moiraine so she could lift an image of the palace from her mind.
Myst reached the first dorm room and looked inside. "Two raised bunk beds with desks under them, wooden chairs, two dressers and a shared bathroom, could be worse."
"Could be a lot worse," Laurena agreed as she walked over and checked the bathroom. "Looks like it was designed for a mage or a noble."
Myst walked over and glanced between the high quality sink and glass shower stall then focused on the roll of toilet paper. "Conjures toilet paper, lasts ten minutes off the roll. To hell with the rest, that's worth the hassle of creating the tower right there."
Laurena laughed as she started stripping out of her gear and sticking it in her inventory. "Swap to your blue form and let's test the showers."
Myst swapped forms and tossed her dress in her inventory then walked over, opened the clear glass shower door and turned the shower on, smiling when she got instant hot water at a decent pressure. "I could get used to this."
"Do you have any soap?" Laurena asked as she finished stripping and stepped into the shower that was larger on the inside than the outside.
"I'm sure I can find something," Myst replied as he looked through his inventory for soap.
