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

tennis ball off of the side of the mansion, mastering both breathing in Myst to fill his Core to his new limits, as well as creating Triggers to catch the ball on the rebound.

Well, trying.

Jeb let the ball hit him in the chest before it dropped into the palm of his hand.

What am I missing? Jeb thought, eyeing the fuzzy ball in his palm. He was still trying to tune into specific events, but it wasn’t doing anything. It never triggered the ball of Myst.

If an object comes towards me at a speed greater than 5 mph, deploy the bubble of force.

Jeb tried to focus on the criteria, focusing on tuning those events in tight.

He threw the ball, which hit the wood and rebounded, hitting him in the chest again.

What am I missing?

Jeb set the ball down between his legs and closed his eyes, reviewing what he’d read in the book. He had to picture the scene vividly, so clearly as to confuse what was real, then strip away the non-relevant parts, applying the image to the Trigger.

Jeb took a long breath and tried to envision the ball approaching him, every single detail.

The sudden shriek of one of the children playing dodgeball distracted him, and an instant later, a dodgeball whizzed out and smacked him in the face.

Jeb opened his eyes with a startled grunt, expecting to see a red ball rolling away from him and a dozen guilty-looking kids.

Instead, he saw them still playing, throwing the red rubber at each other at inhuman speeds. He glanced around and didn’t see any indication he’d been struck at all. The sensation of the rubber hitting his nose faded like a ghost. No bruising, no blood, no sting.

Did I just imagine it so well that I actually experienced it?

Jeb frowned, looking at the tight ball of Myst in front of him.

Worth a shot.

“Hey you guys!” Jeb shouted, waving, catching their attention. The children looked apprehensive, having earned the attention of ‘The Boss’.

“Which one of you wants to throw dodgeballs at my face?”

Colt raised his hand. Because of course he did.

“Alright,” Jeb said, turning to face Colt. “Now first I need to—Gah!” Jeb grunted as a dodgeball smacked him in the nose, ricocheting off into the yard where one of the younger kids chased it down.

“Sorry, were you saying something, pops?” Colt asked with an evil grin as another dodgeball was placed in his palm.

Jeb briefly considered a cost/benefit analysis of cussing the teen out, but decided against it. Enemies weren’t going to wait for him to get ready, and throwing a fit in front of children was beneath him.

“Carry on,” Jeb said, trying to picture a dodgeball hitting him in the—

Bam!

“Gah!” Another dodgeball flew away into the yard from where it’d hit Jeb in the face.

Little shit’s enjoying this, Jeb thought as Colt limbered up another throw.

Just for that… Jeb unwove the packet of Myst and gave it a new set of instructions, then went back to focusing on linking the trigger to the—

Bam!

Jeb managed not to get startled that time, letting the ball bounce off him without comment.

“I don’t know why you’re doing this, but I’m not complaining,” Colt said, aiming for face-ball number four.

Jeb took a deep breath, closed his eyes and focused on the dodgeball coming toward him, picturing every minute detail down to the—

Faster than Jeb could react, the Myst packet unspooled, leaping outward to grab the ball mid-flight.

Bam!

Bam? Jeb opened one eye and saw Colt tumbling backwards onto his ass. The teen’s nose bore a hint of red from where the rubber ball had smacked it, and the ball itself was bouncing off to the side at high speeds.

In your face, brat! Jeb cheered inwardly.

“The hell was that!?” Colt demanded before sneezing.

“That was a Mystic Trigger,” Jeb said, weaving another Myst packet. “Throw another one.”

“With pleasure,” the teen said, wiping off his nose and climbing to his feet.

Jeb closed his eyes and focused on the dodgeball, trying to recreate his—

Sploosh!

Ice-cold slime covered Jeb’s entire body in an instant, soaking him from head to toe. It was cold enough to wrench a gasp out of him as it worked its way into his clothes.

Jeb’s eyes flew open in time to see red rubber flying towards his face.

Chapter 25: The Storm

***Gale the Roil Chaser***

Being a Roil Chaser was dangerous work, but it was rewarding, in more ways than one.

The empire needed to know immediately if the living storm made any unexpected movements, and Gale liked knowing that the advance warning afforded by him and his companions was literally saving lives from the grim fate that awaited them inside the tangled mass of spacetime.

The incredibly rare and valuable Space and Time lenses that dropped in the wake of the storm were just kind of a bonus. The majority of their pay came from the steady work of mining faradan and government sponsorship.

The danger came from the monsters the Roil would leave in its wake, strange abominations that often had no matching equivalent in the outside world. These creatures were often aggressive, and always tough, for nothing weak could survive being torn from its home plane and thrown violently into another.

Gale and his companions were sitting around the fire, sharing stories in the chill desert night, passing the time with some of the only entertainment they could afford, besides sex.

Gale was currently a relief, so he wasn’t allowed.

There were myths that children conceived in the shadow of the Roil were malformed, but anyone who’d followed it for longer than a few months had long since been disabused of that notion. The animals in the living storm’s wake didn’t suddenly give birth to two-headed babies or strange malformed hybrids.