Chapter 7 (Patreon)

Chapter day cometh again!

And this one is pretty fun. We finally get to see what Finn is up to. Needless to say, he hasn't been taking the failed break in well -- or Eliza's radio silence afterward.

Which makes for a super fun conflict in this sequence lol.

Enjoy!


Chapter 7 - Finn-agle

Still in Cady’s Pretty Princess Castle

A few minutes later

Jason

“Are you sure about this plan?” Alex muttered skeptically.

The others were equally skeptical.   Jason was used to that, although you’d think they’d learn to trust his schemes by now.  They always worked out.

Okay, fine… they almost always worked out.

“It’s our best play,” Jason offered with a shrug.

“We’re going to have to get my father’s approval,” Alex muttered reluctantly.  Cady grimaced, but kept reviewing her calculations, glowing text spiraling through the air.

“Or, maybe this is an opportunity to show him what you can do?” Eliza offered gently.  Alex’s gaze shot to the demure water mage.  “That you’re more than just a trophy.  A tool.”

Apparently, Alex wasn’t the only one full of surprises.  At least, judging from the stunned expression on his face – the one warring between anger, surprise, and embarrassment as he noticed the others listening.  Even Eliza looked shocked that she’d said it, but she mustered herself, meeting his gaze.  It seemed the two of them had bonded during their heist.

Jason hesitated at that thought.  Or was she testing him?  To see if Alex might be the one that had tipped off Cerillion?

“Unless you don’t think you can pull it off?” Eliza added.

Wow.  She really wasn’t pulling her punches.

And even more surprising?  Alex conceded the point.

“We both know I can,” he shot back, his eyes flaring with ivory power as he rose.  His mana formed an aura around him in a halo.  “Give me a day.”

With that, Alex walked to the terrace ringing the room, his wings snapped open, and he leaped from the nearby ledge, speeding back down toward Pax.

“Did—did he just agree with her?  I guess miracles do happen,” Frank muttered.

“We can handle the rest of the prep,” Riley offered to Jason, gesturing at the shifter.  “We’ll need bodies, but I imagine I can find volunteers if I promise them a spot on camera.”

“Appreciate it,” Jason replied, his attention elsewhere.

Eliza had used Alex’s exit to sneak off and she was already heading for the doorway. 

Riley followed his gaze, her expression somber.  “She’s… different.”

“I’ve honestly never seen her speak up like that,” Frank added.

They were mirroring Jason’s thoughts.  He’d worried that getting caught breaking into Cerillion Entertainment headquarters would force Eliza back into her shell.  A downside of his plan.  Another necessary risk.  However, it seemed it had the opposite effect.  Now he wondered if she was strong enough to help him with something else… or, should he say, someone else.

Riley seemed to pick up on his thoughts.  “Go,” she urged him.  “We’ve got this.”

“I appreciate it – and you,” he offered, pulling her close and leaning forward for a kiss—

Only to get a hand in the face.  “Nope.  Your face is still made of skeletal bugs.  If you want to get some of this, you’re going to have to take me on a real date.”

She smiled up at him, teasing.  Sort of.  Although, he did owe her.

“Uh, not to interrupt, but Eliza’s escaping,” Frank muttered, breaking the moment.

Jason shot his friend a grin and Riley a final, longing look.  Then, with a burst of amber, he shot off after Eliza.  He managed to catch her just before she made it to the first set of stairs.

“Where are you headed?” Jason asked, suddenly standing beside her.

The water mage jumped, side-eyeing him, her hand hovering above the wand at her waist and her sapphire mana coalescing in her other palm.  “Uh… nowhere.”

“Really?  That’s great, because I could use some help,” he replied with a smile.

“With, uh… with what?” Eliza shot back, mustering her composure and straightening her shoulders.  She even managed to look him in the eye.  Confidence looked good on her.

“Oh, nothing big.  I just need to go talk to Finn.”

Her face went white, her body frozen in place.

“That’s, um—which is to say, he’s probably busy, right?,” she fumbled nervously.

Which made sense.  This would be their first conversation since the break-in.  A problem that Jason needed to address.  After all, he needed them to work together.

“Why, uh, why do you need my help?” she chirped finally.

“The two of you seem like you connected during that whole gauntlet of death in the Mile High Club.  Not unlike you and Alex, apparently,” she winced, her face entirely free of blood now.  “And I have some news for him.  Something I think will be easier coming from a friend.”

He didn’t mean for that last part to come out so menacing, but his Perception skill politely informed him that Eliza’s heart had momentarily stopped beating.  Also, that she might faint soon.

“Don’t worry, this will only take a second,” he insisted, a bony arm slinking across her shoulders – partly to keep her standing.  Meanwhile, he led her toward the stairs.

“Besides, Finn is already expecting us.”

Ahh, this time she did pass out.  Damn.

                    *

Jason knew how this looked.

Like he was kidnapping Eliza.  Or torturing her.  Or possibly using her as a human shield to redirect Finn’s attention – a living, breathing distraction.   To his credit, the avatar of flame could be… intense.  Also, eerily perceptive and almost supernaturally intelligent.

But Jason was actually doing this for Eliza.  He was being a friend.  Because he had something that Finn wanted – something that might make him overlook how Eliza had failed to secure the data from Cerillion and then avoided him for a couple weeks in-game.

However, Brian hadn’t seen it that way.  Especially when Jason finally emerged from Cady’s Pretty Princess Castle of endless stairs carrying the unconscious water mage.  The creature had been rather alarmed, his branch-like arms transforming into wooden spears, poisonous flowers blossoming along their length as those penetrating blue eyes bore holes in Jason’s forehead.  Likely the same holes Brian wanted to make in Jason’s torso.

He’d explained, of course.  Had handed Eliza over calmly.

Yet Brian still seemed to be holding a grudge.  Which was evident in the way the creature insisted on carrying Eliza to Finn’s lab – even after she’d woken up.  How he’d forced Jason to keep his distance by forming a thick bramble around the wheels of the makeshift carriage that he’d had grown for the avatar of water.  And how he was still glaring when she stepped out.

“Appreciate the help,” Jason offered glibly with a nod at Brian.

The creature’s eyes just flashed ominously.

He must have picked up on Eliza’s anxiety.  The way she was staring nervously at the imposing structure in front of them.  A colossal stone bunker reinforced by thick metal beams and every inch covered in wards – the designs etched deep into the rock.  Layers of protections that even the combined strength of the other avatars would have trouble breaching.

Finn hadn’t been in a talkative mood lately.  After helping out with some of Pax’s renovations, he’d holed himself up in this impenetrable bunker – his “new lab.”  Even his daughter Julia and her partner Kyyle hadn’t managed to make it inside his secretive lab.  To be fair, that could have been Jason’s fault.  Giving Finn his relic early might have been a small miscalculation on his part…

However, he hoped things might be different today.

Jason pressed the gem embedded in the wall beside the door, waiting a few seconds before—

“What do you want?  I told you don’t want to be disturbed,” Finn growled, the air gem above the reinforced steel door flashing with each word.

“Ahh, I know, researching your relic,” Jason acknowledged, holding up a single bony finger to Eliza, who was looking quite pale again.  “That’s actually what we came to chat about.”

“See?  He’s busy.  We can just come back,” Eliza whispered, almost frantic.

“Wait… who was that?” Finn asked, an edge to his voice.

“As I said, we came to chat – me and Eliza.”

That was met with sudden silence – one that stretched on long enough for Jason to begin to wonder if Finn had heard him.  Just as he was about to speak up again, the door let out a whirring series of clicks, followed by a heavy clunk.  The surface shimmered as dozens of wards peeled away and that ridiculous door slowly opened, forming just the smallest chink in Finn’s armor.

Okay, fine.  Maybe Jason had an ulterior motive in enlisting Eliza’s help.

Specifically, uh, using her to get inside Finn’s bunker of solitude.

But this was still for her own good – she’d see that eventually.  Maybe.

Even if he had to push her inside…

Fortunately, once the door swung shut behind them and the wards snapped back into place with a crackle of energy, there was nowhere for Eliza to run.  No one to save her – Brian stuck outside and beating feebly against those same wards.  Barely audible thumps from inside.

This was also the first time Jason had seen the new lab.

He’d been expecting some type of high-tech labyrinth of halls and passages.  Rooms hidden away behind sliding metal doors that concealed Finn’s secret projects.

Instead, they were met with a single huge room, the ceiling towering several stories overhead.  And in the center was a monstrosity.  An impressive collection of Nuerogem material – every ounce that they had left.  Everything that Cady had gathered from the past; that Finn had stored in his bags.  It created a complicated lattice that was anchored to the floor and stretched up to the ceiling.  Magical circuits twisted together in dizzying patterns, the material pulsing as mana flowed through those crystalline conduits.  Bright orange, emerald green, deep blue, vibrant yellow, blinding white… and even traces of sludgy darkness.

The source of that mana was obvious.  Huge conduits flowed into the building through the floor – no doubt, tapping into the crystals overhanging Pax where they stored most of their mana.  Without mana wells, they’d been forced to improvise.  They collected the mana that the travelers and residents paid to use the cities’ basic services and pooled it as best they could.

All of that mana now fed into consoles ringing the ground floor where Finn was standing.  His brow dotted with sweat, the band of cloth covering his eyes soaked.  A flaming crown hovered above his head and a metal floated before his face – a telescoping lens made of various materials.

All focused on the object floating in the center of that neurogem lattice – suspended in a gravitational field of pulsing emerald energy.

Finn’s relic.  A simple, plain looking hammer.

Ball-Peen Hammer (Unidentified)

A hammer.  For hitting stuff.  Helpful for taking out your anger.  You know, the frustration you might feel at being an abject failure.

Quality:  S

Durability:  NA

Damage:  NA

As Jason and Eliza looked on with stunned expressions, the mana cascading through that complicated circuit grew in power.  One of Finn’s hands was embedded in the console, the neurogem material that made up the limb deforming and pulsing with power.  Meanwhile, flames rippled across his other hand, his fingers a blur as they darted across the console.

With a sudden surge of power, mana flowed through those circuits in a blinding torrent, streaking and crackling toward the hammer.  The energy soon wrapped the relic.  It tried to freeze, electrify, burn, crush, corrode, and illuminate that simple tool.  To pry out its secrets with brute force.  The power grew so great that Jason and Eliza were forced to look away, the light blinding and the entire room trembling from the force of those energies.

Finn was even forced to summon his metallic spheres, a dome of super dense, dark metal forming around the hammer and that crystalline lattice to protect the consoles.  The metal slowly began to glow a dark red as it heated up – not immune from that incredible energy.

And just as fast it appeared—the energy suddenly vanished.

Finn strode out from around his console, the metallic walls melting down and reforming into molten basket-ball size orbs that orbited him like miniature suns.  His lens telescoped inward as he peered through the smoke and dust – as he inspected that plain hammer.

The one still floating there.  Completely unharmed.  With the same taunting notification.

“Gods damn it!” Finn growled.  With a gesture, he turned and a sphere of metal rocketed across the lab, forming into a spear that sliced into a nearby wall – carving deep.  Fire mana radiated away from his body in pulsating waves so intense that Jason could feel the heat from the door.

Where he and Eliza were still standing.

Ahh, and the water mage was trembling now, her eyes wide. 

“Of course he’s in a terrible mood,” she murmured.

While he might have lost his sight, Finn’s hearing must have still been intact because he turned at the sound of her voice.   His eyes were just smoldering lumps of metal, the only part of him truly visible through the dust and debris.  A fiery demon focusing on new prey.

Huh.  Okay.  It was possible Jason had miscalculated slightly.