Apocalypse: Fairy System by Macronomicon (fox in socks read aloud txt) 📕

Jeb’s Myst Core was barely a flicker of the size it had been when he was in the Tutorial, a sad little candle compared to the massive star it had been right before the end.

Jeb pictured his straw siphoning out the faint Myst that hung around the edges of his tiny star, drawing it out in a thread.

The Myst was dull, and slow to react, but Jeb managed to prod it into motion, creating an ultrafine thread of Myst connected to him.

He carefully spooled it out and poked the ring’s outer metal.

The ring shifted slightly.

He poked the Myst hurricane spinning in the center of the ring.

Nothing. The Myst swirling in the center rebuffed his efforts, pushing Jeb’s own Myst away like a fart in a windstorm.

“Well, that’s probably not gonna work,” he said, crossing his arms and glaring at the ring, trying to will it into working.

Reveal your secrets to me!

“He could have left a manual,” Jeb muttered.

“Technically true,” Smartass groaned from Jeb’s pocket.

“What if I shake it really hard….”

Jeb spent the next hour or so fiddling with the magic ring to no avail, until he got bored and jammed the uncomfortable thing back onto his finger. It’ll do something…sooner or later.

Jeb flopped onto his back, making sure not to squish Smartass, and stared at the ceiling.

There’s that crack again.

This ceiling is the same color as the barracks.

No, the barracks was beige. This is taupe.

Is that crack getting bigger?

Is The Spike about to come through the ceiling and crush me?

Has it already?

Jeb took a deep breath and ran his thumb over the scar on his palm, evidence that the past was in the past. He carefully recounted the events leading up to today, and while they were outlandish, they didn’t have the disjointed skipping-about of dying neurons trying to make sense of oxygen deprivation.

They were too cohesive. The narrative was too fluid. It had to be real.

I am alive.

Jeb closed his eyes, taking deep breaths as he began trying to relax in the deathtrap of an inn. Counting breaths, counting sheep, counting Smartass’s toes; counting anything he could to relax and keep his mind off—

Nope, not gonna think about it.

Jeb walled those thoughts off, blockading them before they could even reach those well-trodden roads, letting them wither away in his brain.

His chest began itching.

That’s just my nerves. There’s nothing wrong with my chest.

To prove it wasn’t anything to worry about, Jeb went to scratch the itch. Just scratching an itch. Nothing out of the ordinary here. All fine.

Jeb reached up and tried to scratch his sternum, but something blocked his hand, sending a thrill of panic through him. Is there something on my chest right now? Something in it!?

When he brought his fingers back to his face, they were drenched in blood.

“FUCK!”

Jeb jerked out of sleep, heartbeat pounding in his temples as he sat up. He spotted a pair of feet tumbling away from him in the dark as Smartass was launched off his chest like a stone from a catapult, flailing all the way down to the inn’s wooden floor.

“Ow,” Smartass groaned into the rough-hewn wood.

Jeb struggled to get his jackhammer of a heartbeat under control as he tried to defuse the panic whirling around inside him.

It was just Smartass sleeping on my chest again. I’m fine.

Practically against his will, Jeb’s body got out of bed and began pacing, trying to ride out the adrenaline eating away at his nerves like acid.

Long, slow breaths. It’s not real.

Jeb stopped counting when he reached thirty-seven breaths and his heart finally settled to a near-normal rate.

Maybe I can get back to sleep again. He glanced at the window.

The sun was coming up.

Damnit. It was never this bad in the Tutorial.

Jeb’s jaw dropped.

“Smartass, I think I need something trying to kill me so I don’t kill myself.”

Smartass levered herself up, peering at him in the dim light. “That makes no sense. But you’re telling the truth.”

Chapter 3: Job Hunting

“You wanna run that by me again?” Zlesk asked, twiddling his battered pen between his fingers.

“I said, do you have any dangerous jobs that you outsource to civilian contractors? This is like the Wild West, isn’t it? Where are the ‘dead or alive’ posters?” Jeb asked, glancing around the alien’s office.

“If you don’t have anything relevant to say, I haven’t had breakfast yet and I’ve got shit to do, sooo…”

“So give me something to do.” Jeb thought for a moment. “Like that stacked lady who killed the blond guy disappearing settlements out on the edge of the Stitch. I could do that: Hunt murderers for fun and profit.”

Zlesk let out a short bark of laughter. “Those are imperial enforcers, hand-picked and sworn to the throne, not mercenaries or bounty hunters. They are level one hundred at least, and they’re sent after the kind of monsters that you couldn’t imagine, not your typical bandit or sand-pirate. They have Myst, meaning they’re aristocrats, too. The idea of you asking for one of their jobs is as ludicrous as walking into Baron Hortz’s office and taking a shit on his desk.”

“…So mercenaries and bounty hunters do exist,” Jeb said. As well as sand-pirates, which sound really fucking cool.

“Ugh.” Zlesk face-palmed. “You’re gonna get yourself killed.”

“I don’t see what you stand to lose by giving me something here. Either way, I won’t be bothering you by begging on the corner anymore.”

Zlesk glared at him for a moment. “I can’t in good conscience help a one-legged, level six civilian perform assisted suicide. I’ll have no part in it.”

“You know I’m just going to ask someone else until