Mist of Shadows
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Dragon King Part 10
🕑 Added 2021-04-03 08:56:02 +0000 UTCMyst wasted no time prying the magic box open, despite the enchantment on the box that should maintain the air quality, being trapped in a box couldn't be pleasant. He helped the red haired child climb out of the box, barely noticing her short green dress, green eyes or her half mask thanks to reading her name on his upgrade page. 'Jean Grey?' His gaze jumped down to the talents and powers section, not sure if he should be surprised or not that she had empathy, telepathy and telekinesis at a terrifying level.
"Where the hell is Westeros?" Jean asked as she glanced around the room before focusing on Myst as he seemed to know the most. "What the fuck do you mean I'm a comic book character?"
"My world has stories about someone with your name and abilities," Myst replied as he quickly opened his skill book menu and created a skill book for her mental shield.
"Why the hell would I marry someone with eye beams?" Jean asked in disgust, catching bits of her future or at least versions of it as most of the images in the kid's mind were tied to different images of her future self.
"No clue, I never understood what she saw in Cyclops," Myst replied as he tried to use the skill book, getting a notice that he lacked the required ability to use the skill. 'Shit!' He quickly created a skill book for her telepathy then used it and the mental shield book.
"Eye beams?" Hermione asked, glancing between Jean's red hair and green dress that barely reached her mid thighs. "Who are you?"
"That's unfair," Jean complained with a pout when the boy's mental shield cut her off from looking at his thoughts unless she wanted to push.
"Life isn't fair," Myst replied with a shrug, relieved to have some basic mental defenses so she couldn't poke through his memories without him knowing about it.
"Path," Jean replied as she turned to look at Hermione.
"Path?" Hermione asked with a raised eyebrow.
"It's short for telepath or empath," Jean replied with a shrug. "I needed a code name, I was seven," she admitted as she fished for information about her current location. "You can call me Jean since we're not on earth anymore."
"You don't seem that concerned about finding yourself in a strange world," Hermione said, studying the girl.
"You should hear some of Uncle Logan's stories," Jean replied with amusement. "Aliens, ancient gods, dealing with vampires or fighting evil mutants in the Canadian wilderness, you name it, he's probably done it at least once."
"Logan, as in Wolverine? How did that happen?" Dawn asked, putting the pieces together thanks to the names and the fact that Myst had quickly created and used two skill books before calming down.
"Yep! He saved me from some evil mutants a couple of years ago and taught me how to kick ass and take names," Jean replied smugly.
"Good for him," Myst replied, trying not to laugh as he pictured her beating the tar out of various villains while Wolverine laughed. "To answer your earlier question, Westeros is a fantasy world where magic is slowly coming back after vanishing for a century and change."
"How did I get here?" Jean asked, trying not to focus on Elia and Rhaella's memories of the world as they were rather dark and depressing. "The last thing I remember was trying to sneak into a dangerous location in the crate Magick enchanted so I wouldn't suffocate."
"One of my powers occasionally copies or grabs people from other words, generally when they're in trouble," Myst explained as he created skill books for her empathy and telekinesis.
"So you're saying I'm a clone?" Jean asked with a raised eyebrow.
"Or his power grabbed you before you could get into trouble," Dawn offered.
"Is there any way to check?" Jean asked hopefully as she glanced around the room.
"Not that I know of," Myst replied as he stuck the skill books in his ring's storage and looked at her stats and abilities again. 'No entry for cloning defects or related issues but I doubt that would show up with my gacha unless it grabbed a clone but she also doesn't have the Phoenix Force which might mean she's a clone or just from a timeline where it picked someone else.'
"Are you going to introduce everyone?" Hermione asked, glancing between Myst, Dawn and Jean.
Myst closed his upgrade menu and looked at Jean. "Do you need introductions?"
"No, but it's polite," Jean replied as she lifted everyone's names and general powers from Zara's mind along with information about the strange elf.
"My friends Zara, Dawn and Hermione," Myst explained as he gestured at the girls in question then gestured at Elia and Rhaella. "My mother Princess Elia and my grandmother Rhaella who was the old queen."
"And you're Myst Targaryen, king of the Seven Kingdoms and a sorcerer with the ability to copy powers," Jean replied with a grin.
"How do you know that?" Elia asked, studying the child's face.
"I'm a telepath, it means I can read minds and memories," Jean explained as she looked for more information about the group, not seeing a reason to take their claims at face value.
Rhaella shivered as she realized the nine or ten year old could rip the country apart by whispering secrets into the right ear. "You should avoid telling anyone else about that ability, it could spark a war."
"I wasn't planning on it," Jean replied as she turned to look at Myst. "Can I get a copy of the elemental defenses, increased durability and enhanced strength?" she asked hopefully.
"Sure, just open the book and you'll get the skill," Myst replied as he started creating skill books to cover all of the elemental defenses, setting them on one of the tables so she could grab them as she needed them.
"Thank you. Now that I have some idea what's going on, can I use the bathroom before I explode?" Jean asked hopefully.
"I'll show you where it is and introduce you to the guards so they don't try to kill you or knock you out," Hermione said as she turned and headed for the door.
"Thanks," Jean said cheerfully as she followed the witch, wondering how long it would take Logan to track Magick down so they could rescue her.
Myst absently watched Jean and Hermione leave as he finished the basic defense skill books then turned his attention to Rhaella and Elia. "Between the truth cookies and telepathy, we should have a decent method of sorting through the Ironborn raiders and dealing with Tywin's soldiers."
"You're going after Tywin's forces?" Rhaella asked warily.
"Not officially and I'm not going anywhere, I have people for that," Myst replied.
"I'm always up for getting rid of pieces of shit," Zara offered.
Myst turned to look at Zara. "Thanks and yeah, I'd love the help." He turned to look at Rhaella. "I can understand that being a soldier is a nasty business and that looting is expected in times of war. I don't like it, but I can accept it. What I can't accept is the fact that his soldiers decided to rape a bunch of women and burn part of my city down because they could, because they thought no one could stop them or punish them for it."
"How are we going to prove them wrong?" Dawn asked.
"The army shouldn't break up until after they deal with the Ironborn which means we have time to send someone to sort through the soldier's memories and quietly execute all of the rapists while they're marching."
Rhaella shook her head. "Won't you need them to deal with the Ironborn?"
Zara snorted. "The Ironborn don't have magic users or any reason to suspect that we can see in the dark better than most people can see in the day. The hardest part will be tracking down all of the boats but we can fly so I doubt that will be all that hard. Once we find a ship, it should be easy to fly down and stun everyone on the boat then put them on trial using the truth cookies."
"Telepathy should make it easy to figure out which questions to ask and how hard to push." Myst pulled the hag elixir out of his ring's storage and examined it with his upgrade ability, trying to make sure he hadn't missed any unfortunate side effects. "I don't suppose anyone wants to test the hag elixir?"
"Not a chance," Zara replied with amusement.
Dawn shook her head. "No thanks, I'd rather use a skill book on the off chance it messes with my alternate forms or something weird, I want a popup that lets me know there's a problem."
"It shouldn't," Myst replied as he pulled the cork out. He plugged his nose with his free hand then put the flask to his lips and tipped it back before anyone could stop him, causing his skin to turn into a nasty patchwork of greenish yellow blotches of varying shades and sizes and for his limbs to grow as his form shifted and stretched, going from a six year old child to the form of an old woman with mismatched and deformed limbs, a twisted and broken face and warts scattered all over 'his' naked body.
"Myst!" Elia snapped, horrified by what her son had turned into.
"I'm fine," Myst lied in a high pitched scratchy voice that wasn't even close to his normal voice as he looked at his new form with his upgrade ability, doing his best to ignore the fact that it felt like his insides had been tied in knots and dipped in sewage though at least half of that was probably the taste of the potion that clung to his tongue. He conjured a mug of water and swished his mouth out as best he could before spitting the water back in the mug.
"Nasty?" Dawn asked, hoping he wasn't stuck like that.
"Like you wouldn't believe," Myst replied as he spent mana to upgrade the percentage of the potion the water had removed from his mouth. "That's better," he muttered as he stuck the mug into his inventory to toss later.
Dawn snorted. "Better? You look like a team of drunk third world surgeons reattached your limbs after losing a fight to a chainsaw."
Myst looked at his portrait on his upgrade page and stared at the grotesque monster scowling back at him with scattered patches of blue hair on his scalp so pale it was almost white. 'She's not wrong, none of my limbs match, my skin is scabby as hell and my back is twisted.' He brushed off some of the scabs that had already healed over thanks to his regeneration. "It could be worse."
Rhaella scowled at Myst. "This isn't a joke."
"Relax, it's just an alternate form," Myst assured her as he quickly created a skill book to give someone an alternate hag form, figuring it might come in useful for handing to Cersei. 'It's not listing personality changes or alignment alterations and I have an icon to change back so I'm calling that a success.'
"Did you get anything useful?" Zara asked, hoping he got something they could use.
Myst put the book in his ring's storage and checked his new abilities. "More than I was expecting, it comes with enhanced strength, immortality, the ability to leave no trace on the land unless you want to and the ability to magically speak and understand most languages."
"You're also hideous," Elia argued.
"Give me a second and I won't be," Myst replied with amusement as he brought up the percentage of 'his' body that wasn't covered in warts and spent the mana to increase it to 100%, causing all of his warts to vanish. He glanced at the entry for his spine then looked at the stats for Dawn's spine, then upgraded his spine to match, causing his crunched over form to straighten. "Should I stick with green or blue skin or should I try for something approaching human colored?"
"I'm a fan of blues and purple," Zara replied with amusement.
"Fair enough," Myst replied as he spent the mana to increase the blue in his skin and how even the coloration was, getting rid of the splotches and turning his skin into a greenish blue that he could live with for the moment. He compared his limbs to Dawn's for symmetry and boosted the percentages until his limbs almost looked normal or at least more uniform then started working on his face, figuring he might as well get it close before he started boosting his appearance directly.
"Are you going to hand out copies of the ability to speak any language?" Rhaella asked, figuring it would be useful for dealing with Essos' various ambassadors.
"And the pass without trace ability for our hunters," Myst said as he searched through his collection of stats until he found the entry he wanted. 'Percentage of body hair by location.' He locked the slider for 'his' eyebrows then upgraded the percentage for his head as far as it could go and spent the mana, causing all of his body hair to vanish and appear on the top of his head, filling in some of the missing spots.
He unlocked the slider for his eyebrows then spent mana to fill in the missing sections on his head. "I'm getting closer," he said as he upgraded his hair so it was clean then upgraded the length until it reached his behind, figuring he could get it cut into some type of style once he was finished.
"Except one of your breasts is a C-cup and one is an A-cup at best," Dawn pointed out.
Myst glanced down at his chest then found the entry and upgraded the smaller breast to match before working on improving his feet. He took a couple of steps to get used to the changes then started pacing, trying to get a feel for his alternate form while making a mental list of everything he needed to upgrade before he just dumped mana into appearance and called it good for the time being.
"You're looking almost normal other than the blue skin, can you change back?" Elia asked, wanting to make sure he could.
"Let's find out." Myst tapped the human icon on his HUD and instantly changed back to his child form without any discomfort which was a relief as the initial change had caused a fair amount of pain. He grinned when he glanced down and confirmed that he had all of his clothes on. "No pain or even discomfort and my clothes didn't get trashed, I'm calling this a successful test."
"I'm glad that you didn't get stuck like that," Elia teased as she walked over and started looking through the silk clothes, trusting his various abilities but still a touch worried that he wasn't testing things on volunteers.
"That would suck," Myst replied, glad that everything had worked out with his alternate form even if it still needed some tweaking. "On that note, I should probably upgrade the rest of the keep while you're trying on clothes."
"Sounds good," Elia replied, knowing she'd feel better when she didn't have to worry about anyone breaking in.
Zara smiled at Myst. "I'll make sure everything has an armor rating."
"Thanks," Myst replied as he headed for the door, figuring he'd boost everything once they figured out what they wanted.
"I'll keep you company," Dawn said as she followed him out into the hallway.
"I'd love the company," Myst replied as he headed down the hallway towards the stairs. "Do you think I can steal Maester Aemon from the wall?"
"Can you afford to put an idiot up there?" Dawn asked.
"Fair point," Myst admitted they headed down the hallway.
Dawn waited until they'd almost reached the stairs before she asked, "Is there a reason you didn't mention what the scroll gave you?"
"Yeah, I got a spell that makes temporary dungeons with monsters and loot, I doubt my grandmother would appreciate my solution for dealing with the worst of the Ironborn," Myst whispered as they walked down the stairs.
"Let me guess, you'd toss them in a dungeon and steal anything they come back with?" Dawn asked with amusement.
"Yeah, pretty much," Myst admitted as he headed for the doors where Ser Arthur Dayne was standing guard. "Any trouble?" he asked the knight as they got closer.
"Nothing of note, your grace," Ser Arthur replied. "Are you leaving the keep?"
"I want to finish upgrading everything before morning, I'd rather everyone think it was a divine blessing or something," Myst replied.
"The servants are going to talk," Arthur pointed out.
"I don't see any of them and Ser Barristan is the only one in the courtyard," Myst replied with a shrug, glad that his telepathy let him cheat.
"What makes you think that?" Arthur asked with a raised eyebrow.
Myst created a copy of the hunter's tracking skill he got from Laurena and held it out. "One of my magic tricks, if you want it, use the book."
Arthur accepted the book and opened it, blinking when it vanished. "Sorry, your grace."
"It's supposed to do that," Myst replied with amusement. "Just picture tracking people."
Arthur stared at Myst when he realized he could sense people in the surrounding area. "I can feel people in the keep and the courtyard."
"That's the idea," Myst replied with a grin as he created another book and handed it to the knight. "This will give you the same regeneration as Lord Stark, it should help keep you alive and let you heal people."
"Are you sure, your grace?" Arthur asked warily, not wanting to refuse but not wanting to use up a valuable resource either.
"I can get more," Myst replied with a grin. "Just don't let people know, they'd probably start a war over it. Either way, I'd like to inspect the keep and see the changes."
"Of course, your grace," Arthur replied as he knocked on the door, letting Ser Barristan know it wasn't an enemy opening the doors.
Myst waited until Ser Barristan finished opening the door. "I wanted to mention something to both of you, if you ever see me hurting any of my relatives other than Viserys without a good reason, ask me what the hell is going on and consider stabbing me, it's probably a faceless man."
"Are you planning on hurting Viserys?" Arthur asked warily.
"No but he's an arrogant asshole with a temper that's probably just going to get worse as he gets older, there's an outside chance that I'll hit him for being an idiot," Myst replied with a shrug.
"Fair point," Ser Barristan admitted, having met the prince. "I doubt it will come to that."
"Hopefully not," Myst agreed. "I'd like to check the keep to see the changes."
"Of course," Ser Barristan said as he worked on lowering the drawbridge. "Will the grounds work or should I wake up the rest of the kingsguard?"
"We should be able to see everything we need to from inside the grounds," Myst replied.
"Thank you, your grace, we'll need time to come up with decent suggestions for replacements," Ser Barristan said.
"I trust you," Myst assured him as he turned his attention towards the tower across the way and spent the mana to upgrade it to crystal. "It seems to be spreading."
"How unfortunate," Dawn said dryly.
Ser Barristan smiled, glad that the new king had a sense of humor that wasn't twisted.
Myst grinned as he headed across the drawbridge with a spring in his steps. 'It shouldn't take more than an hour or two to finish upgrading the outside and most of the hallways then I can play with the dungeon spell.'
0o0o0
Laurena pulled her attention away from the dragon skull in the corner of the vault they were using as a testing chamber and focused on Hermione and Myst. "Any luck figuring out why the spell counts as forbidden magic?"
Myst yawned. "Assuming it's banned for a legitimate reason and not because someone hates crystal or some equally stupid reason, it's probably banned because of the extreme mana cost for finishing the spell as opposed to starting it. The cost to start the ritual is low enough that Laurena could have started it before I improved her mana pool."
"In other words, most professional magic users could start the spell even if it would take a small army of magic users or ritually sacrificing a town to power the spell without letting it rip the life and magic out of the surrounding area to create the pocket dimension," Hermione explained.
"In other words, giving the spell to stupid people would result in a fair amount of destruction?" Dawn asked, making a mental note to never let Andrew see her notes when she got back.
"Pretty much," Hermione agreed. "There's also a warning in the notes that letting it drain life from the area makes it unstable and will unleash the monsters on the area when the pocket dimension collapses."
Jean pulled her attention off the dragon skull in the corner. "It's almost like the designers wanted people to cause chaos and destruction."
"Probably," Myst admitted. "As far as we can tell the spell should work if you can feed it enough mana. It's just not something I'd want idiots playing around with or someone without a HUD casting unless they were exceptional."
"What happens if we get stuck in there?" Dawn asked warily.
"I have one of the vanishing cabinets and a crystal orb from the garden in my ring's storage, we should be able to get out even if we lose the connecting crystal," Myst assured them, fairly sure he could toss mana at the pocket dimension for more time if they ended up getting stuck.
"In that case, let's go, I want to kick some monster butt," Jean said, looking forward to having an adventure to tell Uncle Logan about when she got back.
"Fine," Hermione said, looking forward to seeing what they could find in the pocket dimension.
Myst focused on the middle of the room and tapped the spell icon on his list, creating a floating softball sized sphere of green crystal. "You should be able to push mana into it."
Hermione raised her hands and pushed mana towards the sphere, causing a torrent of mana to flow out of her hands into the sphere that reminded her of the beam a proton pack from the Ghostbusters made. "Feel free to help."
"Of course," Zara replied as she raised her hands and started channeling mana into the crystal.
Dawn raised her hands and poured arcane energy mixed with strands of green energy out of her fingers. "Shit…" she trailed off as the sphere started pulsing with magical energy and the beams of mana cut off. "Hmm, looks stable. Who's going to test it first?"
"Give me a second," Myst said as he studied the floating sphere with his upgrade ability. "The flight enchantment on the orb should last an hour and it teleports anything organic and their gear to another dimension."
"Do you want me to test it?" Laurena asked.
"Nah, I know someone I can just summon back if something goes wrong." Myst used his crown to summon Vanessa. "Can you touch the floating stone and take a look around where it sends you?"
Venessa glanced between the floating stone and Myst. "Sure, worst case, just summon me again."
"Thanks." Myst watched his demon touch the floating sphere and vanish then looked at his clock on his HUD. "I'll give her five minutes then resummon her."
"Sounds good," Dawn agreed, glad that she wasn't going first. "Any guesses what we'll find?"
"Ancient secrets or spells," Hermione suggested, looking forward to finding ancient books with secrets in them or magical items that would help them get home.
"I'm hoping for monsters with interesting abilities that I can copy or building materials I can use to create an awesome school." Myst smiled when Vanessa appeared. "Anything interesting?"
Vanessa nodded. "I found a strange town with brick buildings and large glass windows that has glowing open signs and strange carriages without horses. I don't recognize the green skinned monsters with large black eyes and four fingers."
Jean reached out with her telepathy and skimmed through the last couple of minutes of the demon's memory. "Sounds like an American town with aliens."
Vanessa shrugged. "You could probably make decent money stealing the glass, it's exceptionally clear."
"Good point," Myst replied, figuring there were a lot of things they could steal. He focused on the floating crystal and spent the mana to upgrade the flight spell to last eight hours which should give them plenty of time to kill the various aliens or at least figure out if there was a reason to stick around looting and killing aliens. "Okay, I've upgraded the flight spell on the crystal so we should be good to explore for a couple of hours."
"Are there any civilians?" Hermione asked, wondering if they needed to rescue anyone.
"No idea, that's why we have telepaths," Myst replied with a grin as he walked over and touched the orb.
"Yep!" Jean agreed as she stepped forward and grabbed the orb.
Dawn shook her head. "She's way too enthusiastic about hunting aliens."
"At least she has decent defensive gear," Hermione muttered then grabbed the orb.
Myst finished checking the crystal sphere to make it sure it wasn't on an insanely short timer then focused on Jean. "Do you feel any civilians?"
Jean reached out and scanned the pocket dimension they were in. "No…" she trailed off as she felt two familiar presences.
"Civilians?" Myst asked as Zara appeared.
"Nope, just a pissed off Canadian and a girl with a magic sword," Jean replied gleefully as she sent a telepathic message to her uncle letting him know where they were.
"I almost feel sorry for the aliens," Myst replied as he worked on creating and using skill books for the rest of Jean's psionic talents so that he'd have the basics when she left.
Jean shook her head. "I don't, they're evil."
"Fair enough," Myst replied as he worked his way through Jean's collection of talents and skills, wanting to finish up before Logan killed all of the aliens as he wanted to pick up a piloting skill in case they could steal one of the ships.
"Do we have a plan?" Laurena asked after appearing.
"Yeah, kill the aliens and don't wreck things too much," Hermione suggested, hoping they could loot some toilet paper and other essentials.
Comments
Mist of Shadows
It's been a while.
Robert Buniff
This is fun. I don't remember the last time you used X-men.
