Mage Tank

Chapter 212: Divine Cowboy

“Sorry for making you look bad,” I said to Hysteria, filled with regret. “I’m an asshole, and I deserve a good spanking.” I hung my head in shame.

“He is,” said Xim.

“It is true,” said Varrin.

“And you,” said Hysteria, pointing past us. “Do you have anything to say for yourself?”

I turned to see Etja walking into the obelisk room, picking gravel from her hair. She stumbled over a dead Gekkog, then swapped to floating.

“I… shouldn’t try to eat people?” she said.

“You shouldn’t try to eat me,” Hysteria corrected. “Shove other people in your weird hand-mouth abyss all you want, sheesh.”

“I am ashamed of my actions,” said Etja as she landed beside the rest of us. “And I feel appropriately chastised.” Despite being thrown halfway through a wall, her dress was in perfect shape.

“Now,” said Hysteria. “Where’s your Geulon friend hiding with the Zenithar?”

“She’s probably in the Closet,” I said. “But I don’t know where exactly. I’m being blocked.”

“The Zenithar has probably firmed her connection to Geul,” said Varrin.

“I dunno,” said Xim. “She’s not in Eschendur, and she’s not anywhere near a large body of water. I doubt she has half the power she’s accustomed to.”

“You four are useless,” said Hysteria. We all muttered our apologies. “Will the two of them be able to leave without permission?”

“I doubt it,” I said. “Unless the Zenithar has a revelation that lets her teleport to Eschendur.”

“Geul is a goddess of water and life,” said Xim. “She doesn’t have any Dimensional attributes. Deijin might be able to do it.”

“Then we can wait them out,” said Hysteria. “Where’s the exit to this place go?”

“It depends,” I said. “I can open a portal to Arzia at any time, but it's fixed in the last place I opened the Closet. Right now it leads to the Wastes, near where you hit the mountains.”n/o/vel/b//in dot c//om

“That one’s probably buried,” said Hysteria. “Not that it matters much to me.”

“I also have two semi-permanent connections set up. The first leads to Eschengal, a few hundred feet from the eastern gate. I can open it in seven hours or so.” Hysteria gestured for me to continue. “The second leads to the Xor’Drel tribe in the Third Layer.”

“Oh, not that one,” said the avatar. They tapped their chin. “My best bet is to head out near Eschangal, I suppose. Pretty convenient, overall, considering I’ll be the Zenithar by then.”

“Is there anything else we can do for you?” I asked. “We could spread out and look for Nuralie.”

“Yeah?” said Hysteria. “What are the chances of finding her when she doesn’t want to be found?”

I grimaced. “Not good.”

Hysteria shrugged. “Then we wait. Eventually, the Zenithar will need to rest. I can outlast her.” The avatar let out another massive wave of mana to emphasize their claim, then unfolded their legs and settled onto the ground. The mana continued to pour off of them as they looked between the four of us. “In the meantime, let’s have some fun.”

I focused deeply on the concept of ‘fun’. “Some of my board games survived,” I said, perking up. “Since they were in inventory slots when the mansion exploded. I have a drafting cube for–”

“Shut up.”

My teeth clicked as my mouth snapped shut.

“You, Orexis-spawn,” said Hysteria, gesturing at Etja. “Come here.” Etja nodded and trotted forward. “Show me your status screen.”

“Okay!” said Etja. Hysteria’s mercury eyes studied the invisible screens, looking through the mage’s stats and abilities.

“What happened to my hirelings?” they asked as they read.

Varrin and Xim looked at me, but I made a lock and key motion over my lips since I wasn’t allowed to talk.

“The Chovali runeweaver and the Giant elementalist are dead,” said Varrin. “The Wishborn archer has been banished back to the Third Layer for at least a month. The status of the Yeti pugilist and the Hyrachon paladin are unknown.”

“Tsk. You eliminated sixty percent of my team? They were Level 20!” Hysteria reached up and scratched their bony jaw. “Why are your stats so high? You have more in total than they did.”

“Fortune put mana crystals in Arlo’s mana veins,” said Etja. “Grotto copied it over to the rest of us so we could train everything to ten. Then we all unlocked the Dumping achievement and traded stats back and forth with a pretty lady to cheese the hells out of it!”

“Is that so?” said Hysteria. “I’ve seen Delvers grow their stats using arcane methods before, but this is a league ahead of grabbing an extra ten points to Speed or something. Wait, you said Fortune did this?”

“Part of it, yep!” said Etja.

“And who was the pretty lady?”

Etja’s face contorted. “It’s a secret.”

Hysteria cocked their skull to one side. “What was that?”

“I said, it’s a secret.”

Hysteria pointed at Varrin. “Who’s the pretty lady?”

“The avatar known as Avarice,” he answered.

“Fortune and Avarice, fucking everything up, as usual.” Hysteria drummed their fingers against their teeth and studied Etja. “Do a pushup.”

Etja dropped to the ground, did one perfect pushup, then hopped back up.

“Stand on one foot.” Etja followed the command, along with several more. “Do ten jumping jacks. Now do a backflip. Tell me your favorite color. Go and slap the red-skinned girl in the face.”

Etja stopped listing out her favorite shades of blue, then frowned.

“No thank you,” she said.

“This is… confusing,” said Hysteria. “Why won’t you slap her?”

“She’s my friend, and I don’t want to hurt her.”

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“Tall guy,” said Hysteria, nodding at Varrin. “Take off your helmet and throw it into the corner.” Varrin did as he was told, and the piece of masterwork gear clattered off to the side of the room. “Red-skinned girl,” said Hysteria. “Slap the tall one in the face.”

Xim turned to look at Varrin. “How hard?” she asked.

“As hard as you can.”

Xim squared up with Varrin, took a balanced stance, and slapped him across the jaw with the force of a falling boulder. There was a loud crack, and Varrin spun like a top while his body simultaneously flipped end over end until he collided with the wall. When he hit, he made the sound I imagined a four-hundred-pound can of tuna might make. Clattering, twisting metal, a deep thud, and a bit of juicy sloshing.

He hit the ground and didn’t get back up.

“Wow!” said Hysteria.

Two of Xim’s fingers were pointing in the wrong direction. She popped them back into place and shook out her hand. “I have the Unarmed skill,” she said, then looked down at Varrin with a grimace.

“Will he live?” asked Hysteria with all the concern of a lab technician observing the effects of a new pesticide.

“Yeah,” said Xim. “He’ll be Stunned for a while, especially since he didn’t resist. I’ll probably need to heal his jaw, though. Pretty sure I broke it.”

“I think you broke more than that,” said the avatar. “What’s your Strength score?”

“Forty.”

“Is that your highest?” asked Hysteria.

“No,” said Xim. “Charisma is Level 46.”

“So all of you have around 90 more total stats than you should.” Hysteria shook their head, muttering something under their breath. “You’re a cleric, right?” Xim nodded. “Do you have any revelations?”

“I do.”

“How many?”

“I have two that have been fully formed, both of which have been advanced once,” she answered. “I have a third that’s half-formed, but I’m right on the edge of understanding it.”

Hysteria took a moment to digest that. “Are you hearing the words that are coming out of your mouth?”

Xim furrowed her brow. “I, uh… yes?”

“You’re Level 12!” Hysteria shouted, gesturing at us emphatically. “Fine. Okay. Are there any other secret powers in your group?”

“Varrin has some kind of ancestral spirit stuff going on,” said Xim, looking at the collapsed man. She waved a glowing hand in his direction and I heard the sound of bones snapping back into place. “Plus, his family is richer than most religions, which is its own superpower.”

I desperately wanted to make a joke, but I was still in talkie timeout.

“Etja has really flexible mana shaping and her skills can all be layered together to get weird effects,” Xim continued. “She also has that whole thing she did to you earlier, so I’m thinking she’s starting to become some kind of pseudo-avatar?”

“Yes,” said Hysteria. “I was there for that part.”

“Nuralie also has a revelation, but she’s still figuring it out,” said Xim. “She has some weird history with the Eschenden Church which has been holding her back. I think she’s a sleeper, though. I wouldn’t be surprised if she winds up doing something crazy like inventing a Super Alchemy intrinsic.”

“And the flamboyant one?” asked Hysteria, nodding at me.

“Okay, so Arlo is some kind of god wrangler.”

I squinted at Xim in confusion.

“Don’t look at me like that,” said Xim. “First, an avatar brought you back to life. That’s literally how we met. You got all those extra stats from Fortune, who also gave you two obscenely powerful items. You have an ongoing trade deal with Avarice and have survived encounters with Orexis, Anesis, and now Hysteria. You’ve got a lot of godly avatars in your life.

“Next, you have Grotto as a Bonded Familiar, whose attunement is Divine and his deity is literally the System. I don’t know why that works or how, but it does. You also have this weird relationship with System Core 1 which gives you scary evolutions, and System Core 2 almost treats you like a System entity.”

I started to raise my hand, but Hysteria swatted in my direction and my arm went limp.

“Then there are the actual gods, not just little half-steps like the System and the avatars,” said Xim. She glanced at Hysteria. “No offense.”

“Some taken, but go on,” said Hysteria.

“You don’t worship Sam’lia but have two revelations of the Eye. You’ve met all three of the Eschen Zenithars and two of them have done favors for you. There’s something going on between you and Yara since items like those Holy Waters don’t fall into people’s hands without a god’s blessing. Finally, you can summon the Dread Star and ask it a question every seven days which–based on my experience of that ability–seems way too often to be healthy. That’s three wildly different pantheons all hopping into bed with you. At this point, I wouldn’t be surprised if Shog was secretly some kind of deity.”

“Who’s Shog?” asked Hysteria.

“A c’thon that Arlo can summon, but who’s also sort of a Delver,” said Xim.

“Where’s Shog now?”

“He’s taking a year off. Probably so he can conquer his home planet.”

“Hmm,” Hysteria hummed. “My research on your group was wholly inadequate. Although giving myself some grace, I was more concerned with the king, the Zenithar, and the King’s Guard.”

“That’s understandable,” said Xim. “So far, no one has taken us as seriously as they should have.”

Hysteria’s mercury eyes shimmered. “Do you think I’m still not taking you seriously enough?”

“Probably not,” said Xim. “Otherwise you’d have killed us all the moment you managed to Dominate us.”

I heard a grunt and turned to see Varrin climbing back to his feet, rubbing his jaw.

“What do you think, Lord Ravvenblaq?” asked Hysteria. “Am I tempting fate here?”

“Fate aside, your current strategy is tactically unsound,” said Varrin, stepping back into line. “Based on what that zombie… ‘cloak’ said earlier, you could acquire all of this information by dipping into our minds, potentially in a matter of seconds. Having a lengthy discussion like this only serves to satisfy the demands of your concept, and places you at risk of retaliation from one of our allies. The longer you delay, the more likely your goals will be frustrated.”

“Then the consensus is that I should take you off the board while I can?” asked Hysteria.

“That depends on what your goals are,” said Varrin. “Your business with King Celeritia has already made you an enemy of Hiward, but the Kingdom cannot bring its full weight against you while maintaining its own interests. House Ravvenblaq, on the other hand, is less reasonable. Orexis murdered my father. If another of my lineage dies at the hands of an avatar, my family will burn down everything they have to find and kill you.

“If the Ravvenblaqs fail, then you will have also earned the ire of Sam’lia, the Eschenden, Fortune, Avarice, potentially Yara–who is the head of the Littan pantheon–the System, and whatever forces that those entities have at their disposal. The world will become a very small place for you.”

Hysteria leaned forward as Varrin spoke, tilting their head to one side as though they were listening very closely. The waves of mana continued to pour off them, and when the big guy finished his speech, the avatar was shaking.

“That… that sounds so….” Hysteria ran a skeletal hand down their face. “So exciting!” Hysteria shuddered, and their chest heaved like they were taking a deep breath. “But I can do better.”

Hysteria fanned themself with their hands, trying to calm down, then pulled out a pair of silver spectacles and pinched them onto their face. They stepped aside to reveal a chalkboard with four large words written on it, one in each corner. The avatar produced a pointing stick and then slapped it against the board.

“When it comes to maximizing disorder in a society,” they said, “it’s important to consider whether any antagonizing elements you introduce are external or internal threats to that society.” They tapped the stick between the top two words, then swept the pointer to the lower two. “Equally important is whether those elements have boundaries that are well-defined or ambiguous.”

As Hysteria began to lecture us on the nuances of subversion and sabotage techniques, I noticed a curious shadow crawling along the ceiling behind and above them. I didn’t immediately say anything, because I’d intentionally interpreted Hysteria’s earlier command to “shut up” as an indefinite ban on speech. I wasn’t able to do this because of any particular strength of will or hidden mental gifts. Once someone was Dominated, they normally lost all control of their actions. I wasn’t some kind of special exception. Once I failed my Wisdom save, that was it.

No, I was able to ‘massage’ Hysteria’s directions because Hysteria’s brand of Dominate was clever enough to wrap all the way back around to being stupid.

When Hysteria had blasted their aura across the entire Closet, their mental control came preloaded with 668 specific commands.

Typically, a Dominated entity will not act unless explicitly commanded by the source of the Domination. While the status effect grants its source absolute control over the subject, it was tedious for long-term use. It was also obvious to an outside observer since someone who’d been Dominated would inevitably act out of character.

Having a list of default rules allowed Hysteria to ignore these downsides. They maximized Hysteria’s effective control while minimizing micromanagement, and also allowed the person being Dominated to more or less act naturally. Being able to insert hundreds of commands the moment the target became Dominated was outrageous, and clearly fell into the category of “some divine bullshit.” However, Hysteria wasn’t the most organized avatar, and that lack of organization really started to show with their default Dominate commands.

I subconsciously reviewed Hysteria’s 668 rules, trying to decide how I had to respond to the shadow, while playing a mental game called Bad Faith Domination.