Mist of Shadows
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Myst in DC (Side Story) Part 5
🕑 Added 2020-01-25 06:50:50 +0000 UTC
Jack shivered as the storm of lightning finally stopped flowing out of the other magic user’s hands after the last demon had stopped twitching on the ground. “What the hell are you?” he asked as he studied the man in modern clothes that had obliterated the rest of the demonic army with lightning like they were nothing more than murlocs.
Myst briefly considered claiming to be a god but he hadn’t technically asked if he was a god and probably wouldn’t understand the reference anyways so there wasn’t really a point in lying. “I’m basically support staff for a local hero group,” he replied as he looked over the demonic weapons with his upgrade ability, curious if there was anything worth looting.
Jack couldn’t help the shiver of fear that ran down his back as the man casually gestured and one of the giant demonic swords floated off the ground that should have taken a team of horses to drag or the thought that ran through his mind, ‘If you’re support staff, how scary are the heroes?’
Myst gestured at the giant life stealing saronite sword and shrunk it down so that he could put it in his inventory. “At least they dropped loot.”
“You don’t seem all that worried about your world,” Jack said, not sure how to feel about the clearly dangerous mage.
“I’m concerned about the innocents the demons might kill before the heroes show up and slaughter them but I’m not terribly worried about the world. Most of the heroes can toss around a minimum of twenty five tons and have demon bane weapons,” Myst explained as he shrunk another blade and stuffed it in his inventory.
“Twenty five tons?” Jack asked in disbelief, fairly sure none of the heroes could manage more than a few tons with all of their enchanted gear or at least he hadn’t seen anything from any of the cut scenes or movies that showed as much.
“What can I say, alchemy is awesome,” Myst replied with amusement.
“How easy would it be for the Legion to recruit a decent alchemist from your world?” Jack asked warily.
“That depends entirely on the alchemist and how much they’re offering.” Myst frowned as he noticed a man sized saronite sword with a nasty corruption effect lying next to a dead demon. “I don’t suppose you have a way back to my world?”
Jack shook his head. “Sorry, I’m not a mage. I have a scroll that should open a portal back to Azeroth if you want to tag along, one of the mages might have more luck getting you home.”
Myst looked at the fallen pit lord’s blood with his upgrade ability. ‘Random mutations, fel addiction… yeah, that’s basically useless unless someone gets unreasonably lucky.’ He floated the saronite sword over and stuck it in his inventory. “At least I’ll have plenty of metal to play with.”
“You realize that saronite is cursed, right?” Jack asked as he worked on grabbing some of the ‘human’ sized greatswords to sell.
“Good to know,” Myst said as he worked on looting several more giant swords, well aware that it was connected to an eldritch abomination. “A friend of mine deals with cursed items, he should be able to purify it.”
“Your funeral if you go insane,” Jack replied. “Just try not to kill the rest of us.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” Myst replied as he turned his attention toward the warlock’s gear. ‘Bonus magic, bonus stamina,’ he glanced at the warlock’s chest piece, ‘bonus haste and critical strike.’ He frowned as he glanced at the man’s gloves and noticed they were corrupted as hell. ‘75 corruption? Since when was there a corruption a stat in Warcraft?’
He stared at the slightly insane effect the gloves had. ‘Infinite Stars, your spells and abilities have a chance to strike your target with a blast of arcane energy that deals 415% of your spell power and increases the amount of damage they take from the stars by 25%, stacking up to 10 times? Yeah, if I can stack that 10 times before they die horribly, I’m jumping dimensions.’
Myst twitched as he looked at the man’s cloak and saw the corruption and sanity loss resistance as well as the on use ability to make the user immune to corruption for six seconds. ‘So much for everything being like the game. Fifty points of corruption resistance on a heavily magical cloak and the gloves have 75 points of corruption, yeah, I can’t see that ending well.’ He wasn’t sure what the side effects were of having too much corruption but suspected they were decently nasty. He reached into his inventory and grabbed a black cloak.
“What are you going to do with that?” Jack asked as he studied the simple looking hooded cloak.
“Duplicate an enchantment,” Myst replied as he focused on Jack’s cloak with his upgrade ability, studying how the corruption reduction and sanity protection enchantments worked.
“You’re an enchanter?” Jack asked, curious what he was going to place on the cloak.
“I’m not an expert but yeah, I create magical items,” Myst replied as he wove magic into creating a knock off copy of the warlock’s cloak.
“No enchanting rod?”
“Different traditions,” Myst replied as he looked at the crude knock-off cloak that granted 10 corruption resistance and 27% sanity resistance along with a 1.5 second protective ward that completely prevented corruption and cleansed it. ‘Yeah, the rest of the stats are crap but at least it’s a start on making people immune to corruption.’
“What does it do?” Jack asked as he studied the simple looking cloak.
Myst gestured toward the army of dead demons. “It helps protect against corruption.”
“You can never have too much resistance,” Jack said, thinking about the collection of corrupted gear in his bags that he didn’t want to wear until he got more resistance to corruption. It was one thing risking your character’s sanity when you knew he’d be fine, it was quite another risking your own sanity when you weren’t sure that the effects wouldn’t linger. “Speaking of corruption, we should probably leave before more demons show up,” he said as he pulled a scroll out of one of his belt pouches.
Myst stuck his new cloak in his inventory and took a quick look around with his X-ray vision sunglasses to make sure there weren’t any hidden caves or structures present that might contain something interesting. “You’re the local expert.”
Jack quickly used the scroll to open a portal. “You should probably go first.”
Myst skimmed Jack’s surface thoughts to make sure it wasn’t a trap then stepped through the portal and out into a stone room with a number of bookshelves lining the wall and an attractive red haired magic user in her early twenties sitting on a wooden stool reading a book. He checked her robes with his upgrade ability, a touch surprised that they weren’t enchanted with anything other than a charm to make sure they were the perfect temperature.
The woman looked at Myst, a touch concerned that she couldn’t place his face considering how much mana she could feel swirling around him. “Do you need something?”
Myst shook his head. “Jack should be here in a second.”
“Jack?” the mage asked then smiled slightly when Jack appeared next to Myst. “Ah, right the adventurer. Did you have any luck figuring out what the demons were doing?” she asked as she put her bookmark in her book and closed it.
“They were opening a portal to another world, intent on taking it over. We managed to destroy the demons and kill the cultist opening the portal,” Jack explained, not seeing a reason to admit that Myst had killed the lion’s share of the demons just in case she decided not to pay him.
The mage pulled a small bag of coins out of her belt pouch and tossed it to Jack. “Thank you for your help.”
Jack gestured toward Myst. “I also brought an enchanter from the other world back with me, he should have some interesting tricks that we haven’t seen before.”
“Another world?” she asked with interest.
“His enchanting is different,” Jack said, curious about the stranger’s enchanting.
“Ah, you’ll fit right in with the various adventurers that have come back from the future, welcome to Dalaran, city of mages,” she said with a grin, wanting to make a good impression on the foreign magic user. “Speaking of, I should introduce you to Rhonin.”
“Rhonin?” Myst asked, not remembering him from the game.
“He’s the head of the Kirin Tor, which is the council of mages that control the city and are some of the most powerful magic users in the world. He’d want to meet a magic user from another world.”
“Lead the way,” Myst replied, figuring the man wouldn’t have time for more than a quick chat then he could figure out what to do next.
0o0o0
Lexie pulled her attention off the massive wooden carved bear that made up the outside of the elven bank and looked at Kenzi as Velana and her walked over with one of her hands under her cloak. Even without being able to sense the faint hints of greed and smugness radiating off her new friend, she wouldn’t have trusted her smirk. “What’s up?”
“No idea,” Velana said as she walked over holding a prism. “She was looking through the magical interface for the vault when she started laughing, I think she’s lost her marbles.”
Kenzi pulled a clump of golden moss out from under her cloak. “I’m curious if you can duplicate the moss or improve the rate it generates gold?”
Lexie looked at the clump of golden moss with her upgrade ability. “Huh, that’s a good way to wreck the economy.”
“So, that’s a yes?” Kenzi asked hopefully.
“Probably,” Lexie replied as she glanced at the prism that Velana was holding, thoughts of wrecking the economy with conjured gold vanishing as she realized the prism created and renewed a magical barrier every ten seconds. “How does that even work?” she muttered as she tried to figure out how the barrier that absorbed damage could protect the user against poison and disease.
“How does what work?” Kenzi asked.
“Velana’s prism protects against everything, including poison and disease,” Lexie replied absently as she studied the magic running through the strange item. “I’m going to have to figure out how to make a decent duplicate.”
Velana grinned as she handed Lexie the prism. “Have fun, I’ll want it back when you’re done studying and upgrading it.”
“Thanks,” Lexie said cheerfully as she swapped to looking at the prism itself. “How do you even diamond lace something?”
“No idea, you’d have to ask Dagny, she’s the jeweler,” Kenzi said as she walked over to the mailbox to grab the various ore samples that she’d bought from the auction house, mostly because the auctioneer hadn’t been willing to let Lexie spend her parents’ money. “Twenty chunks of lumenstone, a crate of moonsilver, and a box of leystone ore. What are you planning on doing with it?”
“The lumenstone is supposed to negate a certain amount of magic and even repel fel energies which means it’s probably useful for a shield. The leystone reflects light in interesting ways and holds more magical energy than saronite. It should be useful for something.”
Velana shrugged. “Now that we’ve placed our bids, we should probably find Rain and head to Stormwind and fly to Karazhan.”
“Sounds good,” Lexie agreed as she reached out for her sister with telepathy, ‘Where are you?’
‘Just off the Temple Gardens watching a Draenei forge a sword on a neat conjured anvil that boosts his blacksmithing skill, are you done with the idiots?’ Rain asked, still a bit annoyed that the auctioneer hadn’t let her bid on anything.
‘Yeah, I handed Kenzi the gold and had her buy the ore samples. We also put in some bids on various trinkets and gems,’ Lexie replied as she headed toward the gardens. ‘We’ll be there in a few minutes.’
‘Sounds good,’ Rain replied as she turned her attention away from the sword the armor clad pale skinned almost demon like man with glowing eyes was crafting and looked at his racial traits with her upgrade ability. She felt a shiver run down her spine as she studied the magical light magic infusing the man’s flesh, bones and soul. The light wasn’t like the light her family could create, it felt ordered and unnatural in a way that made her want to pull out her paddle and beat some balance into him or at least some sense.
“You seem troubled,” the not demon offered as he worked on his blade.
Rain glanced around and realized that she was the only person around that made sense for him to be talking to. “You have holy light twisted through your body and soul, it’s a little disturbing.”
“I guess that’s one way to look at it,” the man replied. “On the upside, when I die I’ll explode with holy light and heal my friends and smite my enemies.”
Rain shook her head. “Which is only really useful because you’re a player and you’re hard to kill permanently.”
“Fair enough,” the man agreed as he finished crafting the arming sword he’d been working on. “If I’d known I was going to get merged with my character, I would have grabbed my Nightborne shadow priest but that’s not the character I picked when I logged in.”
“I can’t say I blame you, magic users are awesome,” Rain said as she watched a pair of elves walk across the stone bridge toward them. ‘At least the elves are being reasonable about the adventurers, then again most of the adventurers can cut through hundreds or thousands of soldiers without slowing down so maybe they’re just being practical.’
He smiled at Rain’s enthusiasm about magic. “I’m sort of hoping I can learn some holy priest or discipline spells to shore up my collection of abilities.”
A white haired Nightborne young woman wearing ornate robes shook her head as she walked over with a female Void Elf wearing a bikini and knee high leggings along with black boots. “You already have all of the talents and abilities of a retribution and protection paladin mixed together Max, I’m fairly sure you don’t need any more help.”
“There’s nothing wrong with learning new spells. Besides, weren’t you saying that you wanted to pick up some warlock tricks earlier?” Max asked as he looked at his friend.
“Yeah but I’m a mage, we’re supposed to be greedy for knowledge,” she replied as she studied Rain. “Are you a dragon?” she asked, not sure what else would have the sheer amount of mana she could sense.
“Nope, I’m a goddess,” Rain replied with amusement. “I’m just wandering around and learning everyone’s tricks and sharing spells.”
“Oh? What are you offering?” the Void Elf priestess asked, ignoring the girl’s joke about being a goddess.
“If you cast a healing spell, I should be able to learn it and share it with your friend,” Rain offered.
The void elf shook her head. “It’s not that easy.”
“Really? Try it,” Rain teased.
“Fine.” The void elf cast Fortitude on herself, figuring the girl already knew a healing spell and was trying to trick her.
“I’m fairly sure that’s not a healing spell but sure, I can duplicate it,” Rain said as she cast the void elf’s spell on the paladin. “Is that enough proof?”
The paladin glanced at the icon on his HUD. “It looks legit.”
“Weird…” Nightborne mage trailed off and turned as she felt another large source of magic coming toward her. “Another dragon?” she asked as she saw two void elves and something with a massive amount of mana that looked like a human child.
“Dragon?” Lexie asked with amusement as she glanced over the group with Rain.
“You have way too much mana to be anything else,” the mage replied.
“Sorry, I’d love to be a dragon but the elixir is way out of my price range,” Lexie complained.
“Yeah, it was a pain in the butt farming all of the ingredients and buying the stupidly overpriced flask was painful,” the priestess complained. “Besides, it only makes you a drake, not a dragon.”
“I don’t suppose you have any elixirs for sale?” Rain asked hopefully.
The priestess shook her head. “I doubt you could afford it and I’m sort of saving them until I know I can replicate them.”
“Rats, I’ll have to keep checking the auction house.” Rain looked at Kenzi. “Are we ready to head to Karazhan?”
“Let’s crush it,” Kenzi said cheerfully.
Lexie conjured a spell book. “I don’t suppose I can talk everyone into letting me copy their spell books in exchange for teaching you how to conjure a spell book?”
“How long would it take?” Max asked.
Lexie turned to look at the Paladin. “A couple of seconds, I have the ability to magically teach skills or spells I know.”
“I’m game,” Max offered, happy to pick up interesting tricks now that the game wasn’t limiting things and fairly sure there were plenty of paladins that would sell the skills without a second thought.
Lexie reached out with telepathy and copied the spell that let her summon a spell book filled with her spells to the paladin’s mind so that she could get a copy of his spells. “That should do it, give it a go.”
The paladin blinked then cast the unfamiliar spell, conjuring a floating spell book that contained all of his spells. “Damn, were you a GM or something?”
“Nope, just lucky,” Lexie replied as she copied the paladin’s spell book, wanting to see if she could learn all of his spells. “Any other takers?” she asked as she put the copied book in her inventory.
“Sure, I’m curious about the difference between the spell and my racial ability,” the Nightborne mage said.
Rain took a look at the priest’s gear while she waited for her sister to collect copies of their spell books. ‘Magic and stamina… haste, critical strike, more stamina… more magic,’ she mused as she glanced over the various pieces of enchanted cloth. ‘Oh, hey, an alchemist stone, allows certain types of transmutation and boosts any potions or flasks the user drinks which would be more impressive if I couldn’t just upgrade them,’ she mused as she checked the priest’s other trinket, a touch disappointed to find that it had a small chance to randomly boost the user’s magical power when they cast a spell rather than something interesting.
Lexie copied the priest’s book and stuck the copy in her inventory. “Thank you.”
“Thank you. Having the ability to access the mail system without needing to find a mailbox should be useful,” the priestess said, rather surprised that the girl could instantly teach them spells and abilities considering none of the magic trainers could. She was going to miss that aspect of the game but at least they could branch out a bit with what they could learn.
Kenzi glanced up at the sky then opened a portal to Stormwind. “We should probably get going, I don’t want to be anywhere near Karazhan when it gets dark.”
“I can’t say I blame you,” Max said, thinking about the cursed worgen that might be able to infect players now that they weren’t in a game. “You’ll probably want to fly over Darkshire and skip the worgen completely.”
Velana nodded. “That’s the plan.”
“Have fun.” Rain waved at the other group then jumped through the portal and looked around at the shelves filled with books and at the various mages of different races standing around discussing magic and various other bits of lore. She stepped out of the way as her sister jumped through the portal. “We’re going to have to pick up some books when we get back.”
“Yep,” Lexie agreed as she eyed the various books, looking forward to copying everything she could get her hands on.
Kenzi followed Velana through the portal. “We’re burning daylight, we can pick up copies on the way back.”
“Fine,” Lexie pouted as Rain guided her down the ramp that led outside.
“Relax, we’ll have plenty of time to make copies later,” Rain assured her sister, knowing how much Lexie loved acquiring magical secrets.
“Do we have a plan?” Velana asked.
Kenzi summoned her red flying carpet and floated off the ramp. “Mount and fly to Darkshire then we rush over the pass and hope that none of the spirits surrounding the place attack us before we get in the door.”
“We should be able to outrun them,” Rain said, not all that worried about spirits as she could just blast them with magic until they ran away or fell apart.
Velana summoned her purple flying carpet and floated up into the air. “Let’s go.”
Rain glanced at her sister then flew up into the air and followed the void elves, looking forward to blowing up monsters in the dungeon. ‘Aunty Willow is going to be jealous, we get to explore an actual dungeon,’ she sent to her sister, not wanting to have to shout.
‘We’ll just have to summon her once we figure out the best way to smash Karazhan,’ Lexie replied as she gazed down at the city they were flying over. ‘Actually, the carpets are slower than I thought, I’ll catch up. I want to drop a couple of levitation cupcakes on the auction house to see how well they sell.’
‘Fine, just keep the link up and you can teleport when you’re done,’ Rain said, knowing they’d be able to get a decent amount of gold for the cupcakes.
‘Sure,’ Lexie replied as she glanced around to make sure no one was looking then used her magical amulet to change into her teenage magic girl form. ‘I’ll let you know when I’m done.’
‘I’ll let the girls know you’ll catch up,’ Rain replied as she flew faster, making a mental note to upgrade their carpets so they could go faster.
0o0o0
Myst did his best to tune out the researcher’s whispered conversation with the leader of what passed for a mage’s guild on Azeroth as he studied the white haired woman in blue and white robes that was standing next to Rhonin’s desk. ‘Since when did you have white hair Jaina?’ he mused, wishing he could remember why that change was important but he hadn’t taken more than a glance at the game in years.
“My condolences for your world,” Jaina offered, knowing that it couldn’t be easy to be trapped on the wrong side of a portal when your world was being attacked.
“This isn’t the first demonic invasion my world has survived,” Myst replied, hoping that his friends had been able to shut down the rest of the portals without too much trouble. “We have one of our best wizards working on a way to shut down all of the portals.”
“That would be a nice trick,” Jack said, wishing he could snap his fingers and banish every demon on Azeroth even if it crippled several of his more interesting abilities.
“That would take an impressive amount of magic,” Rhonin said as the assistant turned and walked out of the room.
“Or some type of trick that destabilized the portals.” Myst shrugged. “It’s one of the reasons I’m glad that I’m just support staff.”
“How the hell are you just the support staff?” Jack demanded. “You obliterated all of the demons with one spell.”
“Because in my world, heroes aren’t supposed to kill people, even when they really should.”
“How does that help?” Jack asked.
“Their villains don’t hold to the same ideals, which means they managed to survive with one hand tied behind their backs against some of the nastiest monsters around.” Myst sighed. “I’m a bit more practical and there are self defense laws in my world. Either way, we have a number of scary magic users.”
“I don’t suppose you’d be willing to trade magical knowledge?” Rhonin asked, hoping for something they could use against the Legion.
“I’m willing to trade some of the basics, beyond that, we’ll have to see,” Myst offered, wanting to do a bit of house cleaning of cultists before handing the mage’s guild anything too dangerous.
“I’d be interested in seeing what you have and showing you around,” Jaina offered, hoping she could learn something that would help her stop Theramore from being destroyed.
