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

“Ron, you still with us?” Jeb asked, watching the necromancer turn even paler, beginning to shiver.

“Ron?”

The man’s eyes were rolling in his head, his eyelids fluttering.

“Ron!”

Smartass poked Jeb in the temple.

“There are other ways to get his attention,” Smartass said. Jeb felt a nudge inside him, and decided to follow the Mystic logic as far as it would carry him. If Jeb gave a bit of Impact, could it help Ron survive?

“Ron, how about we make a Deal?” Jeb said, grasping at straws. “You don’t die, and in return I don’t steal your shit?” The Deal weighed Impact in Ron’s favor as it restricted Jeb’s behavior in return for nothing more than Ron continuing to breathe.

The necromancer gasped in a breath, a tiny hint of color returning to his face as his eyes refocused on Jeb.

“What the… I felt something… Felt like Smartass, trying to latch onto me.”

He frowned, searching his short-term memory.

“Deal? Wait…was that a fairy Deal?” The necromancer recoiled from Jeb, scowling at him. “Are you trying to rob me?”

“The magic that enforces the Deal could help you survive. Looting your corpse if it doesn’t is just kind of a bonus,” Jeb said with a shrug.

“Fine, Deal.”

For an instant, Jeb got a little lightheaded, while Ron’s breathing began to even out, even more color returning to his cheeks. The necromancer’s eyes began to slide closed again.

“Before you pass out,” Jeb said, fighting through the dizziness. “Where are the kids?”

“I don’t know. They were gone when we got here.” Ron chuckled, then winced. “He was pissed.”

“Where is he now?”

“He went back out the door. Seconds before you showed up.”

Where did he go then? He obviously didn’t come back the way we came.

Jeb’s thoughts were cut off by the shriek of a little girl. Not the ‘I’m having a great time’ shriek, but the ‘this dude is trying to kill me’ shriek. Admittedly, they were difficult to tease apart. Context helped, here.

“That was Nancy!” Colt said, jumping to his feet.

“You go after me,” Jeb said, grabbing the slimelord by the shoulder and using it to hoist himself to his feet, his battered joints aching.

“Ron, we’re going. Try not to die while we’re gone.”

Ron gave them a thumbs-up, dropping his hand back to his stomach before Jeb and Colt whirled away, making for the hallway.

“Aiii!” Another shriek, coming from…the end of the hall? Jeb glanced over and spotted the window was open, leading to the roof.

“They’re on the roof!” Colt stated the obvious and broke into a sprint, faster than Jeb could grab him, now in the lead. The teenager slipped through the open window like an eel in the amount of time it took Jeb to reach it.

Goddamnit, you’re tuned for support, you stupid—Jeb grunted, shoving himself over the windowsill with one good leg, one recently dislocated arm, and a fair amount of Myst.

Jeb tumbled out onto the sloped roof, barely avoiding falling into the courtyard below, where the former sheriff was holding his own against the servants now that the blood-lady was preoccupied with her shattered ankles.

Jeb pushed himself to his foot, even more ungainly now that he was on a sloping, uneven surface.

I need a staff. Big freaking wizard staff, Jeb thought as he awkwardly hobbled along.

“Aiii!” Another shriek. Jeb zeroed in on the sound and pushed himself hard, aiming for it as he scrambled over the ye olde shingles.

Over the spine of the roof, Jeb made out Colt facing off against a keegan in…

Is he wearing a three-piece suit? Weird.

There were children scattered all around the roof, some of them less wounded than others. A few…might have been dead. There were maybe six of them still standing, battered, all of them presenting spears toward the towering keegan.

Blame later, fight now.

Colt, the teen whose Class Ability was enhancing the speed of hand-powered projectiles, and Myst Ability involved tripping people up with slime…screamed and charged the keegan like a wild boar.

Maybe he was discouraged with his slime Myst after Jeb and Zlesk found workarounds, but just charging? Jeb felt like throwing his hands up and giving up on teens as a whole.

The kid nearly got a hole in his chest to match Ron’s. The keegan lashed out with a three-and-a-half-foot length of silvery steel that looked short compared to the trafficker’s outrageously long arms, nearly skewering the kid before he even got close.

Colt must have been packing some armor under his clothes, because he knocked the blade aside with his wrist and went for a feral tackle across the man’s midsection.

The tackle was interrupted by an elbow to the teen’s skull, knocking him down the sloping roof. Jeb reached out with a wisp of Myst, preventing Colt from falling off the edge.

Jeb eyed the situation. He wasn’t confident that he could have matched that speed at all. But there was no longer anyone standing between the trafficker and the children.

There are worse reasons to die, Jeb thought, patting his busty Bat-Signal.

“Yolo!” Jeb shouted, cresting the spine of the roof and rushing down full speed. Do kids still say YOLO?

The keegan’s head snapped up, his attention whipping from Colt to Jeb, his expression growing even angrier.

Jeb’s wooden leg picked that exact moment to lose purchase on one of the slippery tiles and forced him to choose between plummeting forward or doing the splits. Jeb chose the former.

Jeb hit his broken arm, flipped over and smashed the back of his head on the unyielding roofing shingles.

The world became a haze of pain that stemmed from his shoulder/arm, which the concussion actually seemed to help.

“Ugh,” Jeb groaned as he slid to a halt, some ten feet away from the child-killer.

Rattle.

His expensive,