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

“…be a lesson to you, child. Nothing distracts a man more than the promise of wealth. Blind them with gold and you can take their—”

“Hey!” Jeb shouted, his vision tinged red. “Give me back my money.” Jeb dearly wanted to call him a prick, or an asshole, but that would be a lie.

So much of his vocabulary had been neutered by the first rule of Wizard Club.

“What are you talking about, beggar?” the keegan asked, raising a brow. “I do not have anything of yours.”

“Oh, were you experiencing a fugue state when you stole my goddamn silver coin!? Give me my money!” Jeb grabbed the man’s shirt in a moment of mindless anger and immediately regretted it.

The wealthy man had obviously invested some points in Body, because he peeled Jeb’s hand away from his shirt like brittle Styrofoam.

Jeb sucked in a breath through his teeth as the bones in his palm and wrist grated against each other ominously, bending ever so slightly in the keegan’s iron grip. Jeb wanted to groan in pain, but he’d be damned if he let the bastard see him sweat.

“Know your place, human,” the keegan said, staring directly into Jeb’s eyes.

“I’m not the thief here,” Jeb growled back.

“That money was too good for you.”

“You’re full of sh—” Jeb winced as Smartass pinched him in the neck. “You’re lying.”

The rich bastard didn’t say anything, simply giving Jeb’s hand one last warning squeeze before shoving him back.

“What’s going on here!?” Jeb heard Zlesk approaching from the side and his skin went cold.

Goddamn motherfucking shit-ass timing!

“Sera, here is another lesson, child,” the keegan said, glancing at the younger one standing next to him.

“Officer, I’m glad you’re here. This man tried to rob me.”

“That’s bull—” Another pinch on Jeb’s neck. “That’s a lie. He stole from my hat.”

“Garland Grenore stole from your hat?” Zlesk asked, brow arched. “Sure.”

The keegan officer grabbed Jeb by the back of the neck. “Sorry for the trouble, Mr. Grenore. I’ll get this scum out of your hair.”

“Um.” The young keegan standing beside the older one spoke up, drawing their attention to her.

“Yes, miss?” Officer Zlesk asked, about to lead Jeb away by the neck.

“Um, he—” The young keegan glanced up at her father’s thunderous expression and swallowed audibly. “Nothing.”

“You son of a bi—” Smartass pinched him real hard, shocking him out of his lie. The man probably wasn’t a literal son of a bitch, and saying so would almost certainly invalidate a little over three months of carefully considered speech.

These rules are so goddamn annoying!

Officer Zlesk dragged him bodily to lockup, giving Jeb a few bruises from the beatstick along the way when his pace didn’t satisfy the alien bureaucrat.

After a few humiliating minutes of being led through the streets like an unruly child, the officer threw him in an iron cage with thick bars designed to resist someone with far more Body than Jeb had.

“Congratulations,” Zlesk said as he locked the cage. “You could be the first human to be publicly executed for robbery in Kalfath.”

Chapter 2: Lesson One

Jeb was lying on his back on the cold stone bunk, watching the ceiling beam for signs of movement two days later, when Smartass popped out of the woodwork, holding some kind of miniature party horn.

Wonk! The thing unfurled and honked as she blew into it. Jeb could only assume that was what the fairy had been doing the last couple days.

“Congratulations! You have gone a hundred days without speaking an untruth!”

Jeb might have ignored her if it weren’t for the extreme boredom and the creeping dread of being locked inside a room and threatened with death.

“Oh, what did I win?” Jeb asked, sitting up. Anything to distract him from The Spike coming through the ceiling in his thoughts.

“A lesson from the most magically-gifted species in existence! You may now grovel and consider your good fortune,” Smartass said, polishing her nails on the scrap of silk wrapped around her torso with studied haughtiness. “Go ahead, I’ll wait.”

“I don’t feel lucky,” Jeb said, motioning to the cell around him.

“Nonsense. You’re probably the luckiest human on the planet right now, if luck actually existed.”

“Go ahead, lay it on me,” Jeb said, leaning back against the wall.

“Alright. Let’s start with dimensions. You’re aware of four. The three dimensions of space, and time. But did you know…there is a fifth dimension?”

Smartass tapped her fingers together, smiling ominously.

“Yeah,” Jeb said with a shrug. “Quantum physicists say there could be as many as ten. What of it?”

“Gah!” Smartass grunted, her epic reveal ruined. “Alright, fine. The fifth dimension is known as Fate, and it’s intrinsically linked to Time.”

“So, is everything predetermined, or what?”

“Not at all,” Smartass said, pausing a moment and frowning. “Every living being capable of making choices carries around a little ball of something called Impact with them in the fifth dimension. This little ball is the expression of how much change that creature could potentially exert over the future.”

Jeb blinked. “I’m not sure I follow.”

Smartass sighed and rolled her eyes condescendingly. “Say you have two men, identical in every way, except one had more money than the other. The one with more money has a larger ball of Impact than the poorer one. The same is true with physical strength, status, magical power… Anything. Any measurable advantage that you have toward impacting the course of future events is reflected in the size of your Impact.”

“Okay, I think I get it,” Jeb said, nodding.

“Now, The System was designed by a wizard in Pharos a fuck-off long time ago, as a way to regulate Impact and how it works. To manipulate a dimension that we can only perceive through environmental cues and guesswork.”

Jeb frowned.

“As a hypothetical, what do you