Chapter 20

As an extension of the Core four Myst Elements of Earth, Fire, Air, and Water, there are Compound Elements. Compound Elements result from applying the trait of one element to another element to produce something completely new. There are six commonly used Compound Elements.

Compound Element Examples:

Lightning results from applying the mobility of Air to the element of Fire.

Kinetic results from applying the solidity of Earth to the element of Air.

Acid results from applying the devouring aspect of Fire to the element of Water.

Nennel and Ferris both gave me a confused look, which turned to revolt with wrinkled noses.

“What in the name of the Gods is the awful smell?” Nennel asked.

“Did you not hear me?!” I shouted.

Before either of them could respond, there came a sound like rolling thunder behind me. Nennel and Ferris looked past me and toward the origin of that sound. “DON’T JUST STAND THERE! MOVE!” I commanded.

This time, I acted without waiting for a response. I rushed forward, grabbed both of my friends by the front of their harnesses, and yanked them with me down the stairs as fast as I could. I did my best not to run full-tilt because of my new ANFEN cybernetic installments. But the two trailing behind me still struggled to keep their feet under them as I practically sprinted down the stairs, skipping three steps at a time. As soon as I reached subfloor 4, I heard the elemental strike the wall right next to the stairs from where we had just fled.

Every part of my body hurt. My arms and legs ached and throbbed. Every breath brought on stabbing pain from my damaged ribs. My dislocated shoulder screamed in protest as it was pulled by Ferris’s weight while he struggled to keep up. My broken nose was the least intense pain, but it still pounded and burned, and I could taste blood on my lips. Despite all that misery, I kept pushing, kept going.

I kicked down the door leading from the stairway and rushed through. I could feel the enhancement in my legs waning, but I could not stop. If I stopped, we were all dead. I checked my map again as I hurried down the hall, desperately searching for a way out. My eyes flitted over the three-dimensional image, seeking a hint of anything I could use to get us out of this danger. Six paces down the hall, I found what I was looking for.

Strangely enough, we were near an environmental hazard I had planned to encounter. I could use it to my advantage. I slowed down as the desired turn came up and took a short right, kicking down another door with the last of my enhanced strength. The three of us came to a stop at the foot of a catwalk that reached thirty feet across to another door. While the catwalk looked unstable at best, that was only part of the problem. Beneath the catwalk bridge was a lake of caustic liquid. The awful, thick green, yellow, and gray substance gave off a glow that could mean nothing good. Each of the colors swirled with each other without mixing, giving a sense of several living creatures interacting with each other. The thick and large bubbles that grew and burst like breathing cists did not help that sense. The whole fetid pool emanated a truly repulsive stench that anyone could tell was just as toxic as the pools below.

“What the hell is the place?” asked Nennel with a look of revulsion. “This place stinks worse than you do, Iver.” As my sister made her comment, I thrust my dislocated shoulder against the wall behind us and pulled my arm to relocate the joint. 

“I’ll explain later.” I growled because of the pain from the shoulder joint. “Nel, hand over your grav-hook.” As I took the device from Nennel, I continued to throw out instructions at a rapid-fire pace. “Both of you, put on your gas masks and your chem-pants.” I continued to speak while I loosely tied the end of the rope to the railing. “While you do that, I’m gonna cross and anchor the hook. After that, I need one of you to tie off the rope attached to the grav-hook to as stable a spot as you can find. Not where I just tied it. This is to keep it within reach of you two while I cross.” The instructions continued even as I pulled my gas mask from the bag and mounted it to my face. “The rope needs to be as taut as possible, and both the knot and the anchor point need to hold the weight of both of you. But we need to be lightning quick.”

As I moved to stand on one side of our platform, away from the other two, I could hear the elemental flowing down the stairs like a tide. This caused panic to rise like a tide all its own that threatened to drag me down. I resisted that threat as best I could while I tried to punch out the right mental math to pull off yet another daringly stupid stunt.

“Wait, what do you mean chem-pants?” Ferris asked, his brain clearly still not working at full capacity.

“I mean the damned acid-resistant leg guard covers, Rot-brain.” I snapped at him before turning back to my rushed work. To pull off the math in time, I was going to need to take out a loan. I carved my metal claws down my shoulder and tricep. I dug deep, drawing a snarl from me just as quickly as the blood welled and rolled down in a steady flow. It was a lot of life fluid, but I could only hope that it would be enough for what I needed. I drew on ten Vells and dumped all of it into as high a tier of mind enhancement using Distortion Myst and Morphic as I could manage. That meant I gave myself a Tier 5 Mind Enhancement, the highest possible tier for someone like me, but it would only last for one minute. I was really going to regret that action later, but then was not the time for thinking that far ahead.

With my cognitive processing kicked into a preternatural gear, time seemed to slow down. Time became so sluggish I could only perceive Nennel and Ferris moving when I actively paid attention to them for what seemed like several seconds. With this effect active, I turned back to my calculations, triggering a function of my therra that had become a boon in the recent days. A three-dimensional measurement hologram appeared in my vision after what seemed like a long moment but must’ve been near-instant. I quickly measured out the distance from my location to the nearest space across the bridge that looked reasonably safe. Next, I measured the height of the ceiling from where I stood. Then, I measured the distance to each wall on either side of me. After that, I checked the remaining Vells left in the myst crystals I had installed in my Pacer Shoes. After all of this, I changed measurement systems to check trajectory and velocity with the resources I had on hand.

With all the variables I needed plugged into my formula, I realized I only had enough myst left in my shoes for one solid jump. That was one part of this issue. Another negative factor was that the juice I had wasn’t enough for a low jump that would cover the total distance. The ceiling was also too low for me to correct this distance-to-velocity issue by jumping in a high arc. Without my grappling hook, things only got more complicated.

I reduced my cognition to increase the rate at which I perceived time. When the world seemed to move at a quarter speed, I watched my bleeding shoulder until there was enough fresh blood that I knew I could take the next step. My Mystwell had only recovered a few Vells, so my current capacity felt like sixteen. I drew on all of the available blood to channel another ten Vells of Morphic and Distortion Myst into my body, mostly focused in my legs. I knew that this would likely cause severe damage to my leg muscles, but I had no other choice.

With the grav-hook in one hand, I bent down into a sprinter’s stance. I rushed forward toward a less-than-stable guard rail and lunged, carefully placing both of my feet on the rail. The body enhancement let my physical body operate almost as fast as my mind was processing. With both feet balanced on the rail, I felt it beginning to bend, giving in under my weight in slow motion. I squatted as low as I could while keeping my balance and thrust myself into the air over the toxic pool. The jump had pushed me three feet into the air and ten feet forward toward the wall on my right before I started my descent toward the glowing lake. The moment I felt my drop in altitude, I triggered the kinetic burst from my shoes, burning through the last of the myst in the crystals. After a terrifying moment of slowly dropping, the ability triggered. My legs were in the planned position of my left leg outstretched below and behind and below me, and my right leg was bent with my knee thrust out ahead of me. I shot forward as planned, but my foot placement had altered my trajectory in a manner I hadn’t predicted. While I was approaching the wall at top speed, I was veering slightly to the left, away from the wall. I cranked my mind enhancement back up to top gear to give me enough time to think out the situation.

If my estimation was right, I would still reach the wall, but at a point lower than desired. I would need to correct, and with my shoes fresh out of juice, I would have to pull that off myself. I already had plans for the rest of the myst in my Mystwell. That meant I needed to think up a solution without magic. And the solution needed to be decided with enough time before problems got worse for me to make that correction.

I could try to make the adjustment by kicking off with my legs, angling up higher. But without a solid grip on the surface, I was more likely to just slip off. If I still had my grappling hook, it wouldn’t have been a problem, but I also wouldn’t have needed to pull off this madness in the first place. I ran through every option I could think of before the concrete wall was within arm’s reach. When I got a closer look at the wall, I got an idea. The mad ideas just kept rolling out of my brain, but the very source of all this trouble inspired this one.

If Ferris’s hook hadn’t lost grip, he wouldn’t have fallen. If Ferris hadn’t fallen, I wouldn’t have needed to catch him. Because of how I caught him, he made enough nose to draw the ghouls, and so on the chain of events went, but it all started with a bad wall.

The encroaching wall was riddled with obviously weak spots. That was more than likely because of the caustic fumes from the lake below. I adjusted my body to land with my back, palms, and both foot soles against the wall. I made sure my feet were on a weak spot that was visibly crumbling. When my feet made contact, but my back hadn’t, I drew on two Vells, using the still seeping blood from my shoulder. I aligned one Vell with Earth and applied the solidity trait of the element to the second Vell that I aligned with Water. The result was a batch of magical adhesives commonly called Trapp Tar, a Compound Core Element. I conjured the small amount of Trapp Tar on the sole of my left foot. That would give me enough grip to adjust my flight angle.

Once my back touched the wall, I kicked up and off, using the tar to give my foot the grip I needed to angle my leap at a more upward angle. Sure enough, the weakened wall segment only held for just long enough to grant me my desired result. And as I had hoped, the moment my feet pushed free of the wall, the contact point with the tar tore free with almost no effort. My supercharged legs pushed me up another five feet and forward another eight feet. As soon as I reached the apex of my arc, I drew on my remaining myst, six Vells in total. I mentally slammed three Earth Vells into three Air Vells to produce kinetic energy. Seventy-five foot-pounds of force thrust me forward another twenty feet before my descent started. When I knew that my math was right on the money, I was elated. The speed from my last burst and leap barely gave me enough clearance to shoot over the far guardrail. I made it over the clearance with less than six inches of clearance, but I didn’t care. I hit the metal platform and shoulder rolled right into a wall with a painful slam. Hitting the wall was jarring enough to make me lose focus on my dual self-enchantment.

My eyes rolled in my skull in what felt like totally separate directions and different speeds, but I shook it off to climb to my feet. Without a second of hesitation, I anchored the grave hook on the wall beside the exit at a point I thought could hold the weight. I looked back to find that Ferris already had his chem-pants on and started to make his way across the catwalk. Thankfully, I didn’t need to tell him to keep a firm grip on the rope in case the catwalk collapsed. But to my horror, Nennel was still stepping into her chem-pants. She must’ve been the one to tie down the rope, which resulted in a delay in her preparations. But I could hear the elemental rolling down the hall faster than Nel could dress and get to a safe distance on the catwalk.

“NEL!” I shouted at the top of my lungs. “DROP AND RUN!”

It was a true testament to just how close we were as friends that she knew what I meant and did as told without a second thought. Nennel left behind her supply bag and everything that wasn’t on her person to bolt down the bridge. Ferris heard the command and likely also heard the elemental coming and did the same. It really was a display of the Elf’s mental determination that he let go of the rope and sprinted even faster than our Borg friend. But neither of them were fast enough. Ferris was ten feet away from safety, and Nennel was still twenty feet out when the Elemental flowed through the door.

I had come armed with more than just Venna. At that moment, the critical tool was the snuffer elemental pistol strapped to my right hip, opposite my kinetic pistol. I drew my snuffer with practiced speed and took my aim, but not at the elemental. With a weapon that small and simple, any element I had slotted would have done almost no damage to the mass of rot, waste, ghouls, and glass. But because I had a potent Fire Myst crystal slotted, I could target something else. I lined up my shot and shouted one word. “ROPE!”

Nennel and Ferris instantly knew what I meant and lunged to grab onto the safety line we had installed. I waited a few precious seconds. This was partly to make sure the Nennel and Ferris had a solid grip and could make a bit more progress, but even more so, it was to get the elemental into the perfect spot.

When the elemental was almost completely on the bridge, I fired a bolt of concentrated Fire Myst at one of the support joints of the catwalk across the way. Once again, I had to thank Thallos begrudgingly for my training. The shot struck the mounting bolt and melted through it and the weld. The hanging path tilted sharply to the right and groaned for a long moment. Nel and Ferris stopped their progress with the jarring tilt and clung onto the lifeline. And just as I had hoped, the sheer weight of the elemental was enough to break the other bolt mount. The bridge gave a shriek of protest before breaking off at the far end.

The elemental, unaware of my plot and unable to hold on to anything, fell into the caustic lake below with a massive splash of thick slime. I felt a fleeting moment of pride at my cobbled-together plan working out so well. That pride vanished when I saw a part of the outcome I hadn’t predicted. A ghoul. A lone ghoul had escaped from the elemental before it fell. The ghoul clung onto the safety line Nennel, and Ferris hung from. The foul creature was holding on by only a single clawed hand, appearing disoriented for a few seconds as it inspected its surroundings.

“Shimmy, you bastards! Get moving!” I shouted to my friends. While Nennel and Ferris franticly swung hand over hand across the rope, my shout also drew the attention of the ghoul. The creature let out a shriek before it swung up to grip the rope with both hands and feet. The foul beast did as they always do and impersonated crawling like an insect hunting prey.

I cursed as I tried to draw my aim on the ghoul, but I was inhibited. One issue was that the ghoul was crawling at a speed that made leading the target difficult. The other and more hazardous issue was that myst poisoning was setting in. My body felt like I was both burning up and freezing cold; my vision had difficulty maintaining focus, and my limbs quaked.

When the ghoul was almost within reach of Nennel, I panicked and fired. I was trying to melt the ghoul’s head into a smoking stump, but my luck was worse. Far worse. The bolt of fire lanced right through the rope behind the ghoul. Rein-synth cord was not fireproof and definitely not against magical fire. What the rein-synth cord was designed to do was rapidly extinguish any part that was burning using the melted fiber and seal off the end in a plastic-like coating to prevent further burning.

The rope fell, and all three holding tight to it screamed in panic. I screwed up, and I screwed up big. I needed to save my friends. I couldn’t let Nennel and Ferris die. I would not be the reason they died. I would do what it took. I was too weak to pull the rope up, but I might be able to do one thing.

I dropped the sidearm and stepped up to the edge. “Ferris, climb. Nel, heads up.”

I flexed the fingers in my gauntlet and tested my grip even as Nennel looked up at me and shouted, “What?!” clearly unsure what I meant. I would have answered her if I hadn’t already dropped off the edge.

My body’s quaking had only intensified, and my vision could no longer focus at all. I knew my grip was weak, but I still did my best to aim the claws down at the ghoul. As I plummeted down head first, I gave a silent apology to my only two friends. The two of them had put up with a lot of trouble because of me. They would have to put up with a serious scolding from Master Navor, but at least they wouldn’t have to put up with me anymore.

My final act must’ve been blessed by some deity because my gauntleted hand connected with the ghoul’s face, and I clenched with all the strength I could summon. My claws gouged scarlet furrows across the creature’s face, two fingers catching in its exposed sinus cavities. Between that and my dropping weight, the creature lost its grip and fell into the toxic slime that was only a mere four feet below it.

Mentally, I readied myself for a terrible last few moments, reassured by the thought that I did something actually useful at the end. But instead of experiencing my body being dissolved, I was startled out of my introspective moment by a sudden jerking stop, my head only two feet from the toxic slime. I looked up at my caught foot to find a metal hand in a vise grip around my ankle.

I looked past Nennel to see Ferris climbing over the edge as he shouted, “Hold on, guys! I’ll get you up!”

While Ferris was shouting down to us, I could hear Nennel venomously cursing at me. “You suicidal jackass. I swear, once we are safe, I’m going to feed you your own sweaty socks. I’m going to beat the ever-living crap out of you with the first non-lethal item I can find. I don’t care if it’s a mutant fish-puppy or lizard-ferret thing. I’m going to use it to slap you so hard, your father will feel it in the here-after.”

I wore a tired smile at Nennel’s comments until I caught the smell of the pool below and a burning feeling on my cheek. I reached my bare left hand up to my mask as my head started spinning. My fears were verified. Some of the slime splashed up by the ghoul’s fall had splattered on my face and mask and was eating whatever it touched.

Moments before I lost consciousness from either the myst poisoning or the toxic fumes, I felt me and Nennel beginning to ascend at a steady fluid rate. My final thought before passing out was a puzzled reflection on Ferris's ability to hoist us up so rapidly and seamlessly. It almost felt like he had started a winch.