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

hand resting in the bowl of pretzels. The answer to that question was so obvious, it took him a moment to reboot afterwards. Jeb had kinda gotten used to being down a foot.

“Sure, let’s do it now,” Jeb said after taking a moment for his brain to catch up, taking off his foot and setting his stump on the table.

Ron groaned and pulled his sandwich away from Jeb’s stump. “Come on, man, I’m eating here.”

“You might want…a bit more privacy for this,” Amanda said, looking sheepish. “The requirements are…intimate.”

Jeb frowned. “What did the Celebrant of Sabrin Class do again?”

“I never told you,” she said, standing. “Come on, I got a room upstairs.” The healer walked away, her hips swaying as she glanced over her shoulder.

“Well, now I’ve lost my appetite,” Ron said, sliding his sandwich away and scowling.

Jeb blinked and glanced over at Brett. “Brett, I’ve gotta go do some…physical therapy. My finger is still stiff, you know. Gotta work with your wife to make sure it’s fully operational.”

Brett raised an eyebrow. “This counts against your IOU.”

“Fair enough,” Jeb said, slapping a silver coin down on the table and literally flying after the blonde healer.

***Emperor Pikaku, Uniter of the Continent, Ruler of Mestikos, level 327***

“That’s all I know, I swear. I swear!” Mirzos Elkor said, shaking his head pitifully, tears rolling down the sides of his skull. The former judge was suspended in a brackish mixture, slowly swelling as his body absorbed more water than he could handle.

He looked almost human now, grotesquely swollen, his skin tight, see-through, and easily ruptured.

“I know,” Pikaku said, prodding the keegan’s skin with his claws, starting a tiny rip in the man’s skin and allowing the swelling to take care of the rest of it. The rip spread on its own as the keegan gave a howling cry.

Keegan were no good in water for extended periods of time.

“Then why?” Mirzos asked once he regained control over his voice, half-sobbing.

“Because you are stupid,” Pikaku said, starting another tear across the keegan’s chest.

“AAAAAAH!”

“Out of all the nobles of Solmnath, you should have been the first to shy away from this course of action. You should have known what dabbling in immortality would buy you, but you thought yourself untouchable.”

He tore another hole in the keegan’s swollen skin, making the man thrash in the crystal bathtub.

“Well, do you still feel untouchable?”

“No!”

“That was rhetorical. I already know the answer,” Pikaku said, cutting him again.

“This isn’t rhetorical, though: Did you see any fairies on or around Jebediah Trapper?”

The judge’s face registered a moment of clarity. “There was one… Yes, I tried to kill the vermin, but he actually protected it.”

Interesting. He could have a Vow. That would explain some of the strangeness. It would also warrant further investigation.

Pikaku leaned over the side of the tub, his talons digging into the metal. “Is he celibate? Did he ever run? Tell a lie? Eat more than once a week?” Pikaku was ticking off the more obvious ones for himself. Jebediah Trapper obviously hadn’t taken the Vow of peace.

“He was a lying sack of shit!” Mirzos struggled against his bindings in anger, but the magical chains could have held someone ten times his strength.

Hmm… Pikaku grabbed a towel off the rack and dried his claws off. We’ll give the judge some time to compose himself and sharpen his memory.

“Keep him healthy. Let me know if he lets anything important slip,” he said, folding the towel and putting it back where it came from.

His torturer nodded silently as Pikaku stepped out of the torture chamber and into the dimly-lit stone halls of the vaults under Mestikos.

He could have gotten someone who knew more about Jebediah Trapper, but the chances that someone would notice and take offense to it were far higher. The information he got from the former judge was spotty and colored by the idiot’s own perceptions, but no one on the face of Pharos would blink an eye at his disappearance.

The chance that Jeb had some kind of relation to Mab was slim, from what he could gather, but not completely out of the question. Who in their right mind would protect a fairy?

Reports from every corner of the empire about humans having a strange kinship with fairies were unsettling. They seemed to get along with the creatures more often, innately understanding their behavior.

It was a worrisome fact, nearly as troubling as these ‘nuclear bombs’. The idea that the witch in the Death Wilds might have ways to spread her influence into civilization was unsettling at best.

Not to mention the prophecy.

No, I’ve already got the chosen one, Pikaku thought, shaking his head.

As far as the emperor could tell, for all his outlandish luck and skill, Jebediah Trapper was a meat by-product in the chain of causality that would create the next god.

Pikaku stopped and opened a door to his right, spilling light from the hall onto his next captive.

Vresh Tekalis sat at her desk, writing letters for her family by the dim light of a small candle. The enforcer glanced up, her eyes widening before she came to attention, her horns nearly scraping the ceiling.

“You’re free to go,” Pikaku said, stepping out of the melas woman’s way.

“Thank you, my lord,” Vresh said, kneeling quickly before gathering her letters. One of the letters’ edges caught the tip of her candle and burst into flame, causing the enforcer to burst into quiet curses, putting out the small fire with her flame-resistant hands.

“You’ll report to your usual handler for instructions. You may yet earn your title of Enforcer back, but in the meantime, I've got a few odd jobs that the empire needs done.”

“Of course,” the girl said, hiding the smoking letter behind her back as she bowed.

“Oh, and Ms.