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

metal straight out of it as a dust, then sintered a thin layer onto the blade-edge of a circular disk of ultra-tough composite material scrap he had lying around.

The material Eddie made was so tough, it would bind up his cutters in a fraction of a second, but the old man worked it easily.

Jeb watched in fascination as the old man’s pale purple Myst traced shapes along the composite, which would then shed dust of its stronger reinforcing material, allowing the roboticist to snap it off by hand, leaving a perfect circle.

When he was done, Eddie welded a composite handle to the back of it and called it a day. The entire thing was about a palm and a half wide, and in the shape of a buckler. It was unpainted and ugly; it looked like a circular saw blade, and Jeb loved it. It was somewhat non-threatening and at first glance seemed like a defensive tool, and it was just small enough to clip onto his belt.

“Yep, that’s a murder-buckler, if I’ve ever seen one,” Eddie said, eyeing his creation.

“I’ll call it the Identity Disc, after the Tron movies,” Jeb said, nodding as he imagined it flying around slaughtering people.

“That doesn’t really fit, does it?”

“I just wanna be the one who names something,” Jeb said, throwing the disk into the roiling cloud of the Appraiser.

Murder-Buckler

A buckler that pushes the boundaries of performance for a non-magical item, this unique weapon has been fitted with a jagged Udium edge to tear flesh asunder.

“Damnit!” Jeb gave Eddie the finger and stormed outside in a faux tantrum.

When he got to the top of the stairs leading out of the storm shelter, he paused, listening. Something was off.

The surroundings were quiet.

Orphanages weren’t supposed to be quiet. They were supposed to have screaming children every twenty feet or so. Jeb had grown so accustomed to it that the sound of silence was horrifying. Jeb’s heart kicked into gear as anxiety pressed in around him. The mercenaries they hired were meant to discourage an attack, but nothing was ever set in stone.

Was everyone dead? Were the bad guys waiting in the hedges to murder him?

Jeb frowned and put his back up against the side of the mansion, wrapped a bit of Myst around his vitals and peeked around to the front yard, half-expecting dead bodies.

It was mostly just a handful of the younger girls playing with dolls.

Okay, so nothing is obviously wrong.

Jeb scanned the surroundings and noticed that A: the older, more boisterous children were missing, and B: a few of the mercenaries were gone as well.

Hmm...

Jeb stepped out of the mansion’s shadow and walked up to one of the mercs playing cards with her teammate under a parasol.

“Where’s everyone?” Jeb asked, still half-expecting some strangeness.

“They went to watch the parade,” she said dismissively, laying down a card with an alien symbol in front of her team member.

“Keensha bra gosh!” her opponent cursed, slapping his cards down in frustration.

“Parade?”

******

The parade to welcome the emperor had lined the streets of Solmnath with the finest rabble. It was the only chance the common people of the city were going to get to see the big cheese with their own eyes, because there was a strictly enforced curfew a quarter-mile around the place he would be staying.

Getting a place to watch the procession on the ground was a non-starter, the streets were so choked with people. Jeb managed to track Zlesk, a couple of the mercenaries and the loudest children to an abandoned ten-story office building along the route of the parade.

The parade itself was pretty darn impressive, in an old-timey kind of way. There weren’t any gigantic floats, but there were rows and rows of odd lizard-creatures marching down the paved L.A. roads, their riders separated into groups by species, and presenting a force that would easily tear through the city if they had half a mind to.

It was impressive in that sense.

The emperor himself looked a bit like Big Bird’s cool uncle, with his large beak and cheerful yellow plumage. Riding around him were what Jeb could only assume were some of his vassals.

At his left hand rode a big, faceless suit of ominous black armor that looked something like a Nazgûl. Creepy. Jeb couldn’t judge size super well from that distance, but the person looked imposing, and possibly human. If they were melas, they would’ve had horns.

On the emperor’s right side, Jeb found himself gawking at two blonde humans smiling and waving along with the rest of the silk-swaddled aristocracy.

Brett and Amanda, the only for-sure humans in the entire parade, were right there.

They must have gotten my letter, Jeb thought, frowning as he watched the two of them give their best smile-and-wave. Now all he had to do was set up a meeting.

A new option for how to move forward opened up in front of Jeb as he watched the underwear models canter far underneath their point of view, raisin-sized at this distance.

He had friends in local government now.

I need to arrange a meetup, Jeb thought, going to find a courier, leaving Zlesk, Colt and a handful of others gawking at the size of the army marching into the city.

Once Jeb sent the letter, he spent the rest of his time working on dialing in the bandwidth of various events. The first two things Jeb focused on were the spoken word and moving objects.

Jeb wanted his automatic protections and his bullets back.

Every day, he read and re-read the book while trying exercises that he either vaguely remembered or invented on the spot. Mevar’s experiences had sunk into the back of his mind and it was hard to tell which was which.

Much of his time was spent sitting cross-legged out on the lawn, bouncing a