Taylor and the Twisted Game part 38

Taylor twitched and swung her LED flashlight back when she thought she saw something move that shouldn't be moving. She relaxed when she realized it was just the way the light had reflected off a cloak that was draped over the back of a broken chair. "I'm going to need a vacation from my vacation when I'm done exploring everything."

"Welcome to my life," Amy replied as she watched Egwene and Rand dance on the village green. "What's the problem?"

"At least half the doors have rotted or deteriorated enough that they're falling apart and the sounds my puppets hear when they make noise doesn't always match the sounds the other puppets are hearing. It's a bit nerve wracking despite knowing they're cloth puppets I made from conjured mana gems and secondhand clothes," Taylor admitted as her puppet walked over and poked the cloak with her yard stick, causing the chair to fall apart and the cloak to fall to the ground.

Amy glanced at Skitter. "It probably doesn't help that your puppets are two feet tall."

"Not really," Taylor admitted, "everything looks like it was built for giants."

"Have you found any beanstocks?" Dennis asked, doing his best to keep a straight face as he sat down next to Amy.

Taylor turned and scanned the unfamiliar teenager with red hair. "Decided to swap back to being human for a day?"

"Pretty much," Dennis admitted. "I talked to the Director and she admitted that if you wanted to learn someone's name, it wouldn't be hard using mind vision. Besides, it's not like you wouldn't be able to sense my magic the second I got near you."

"Do you have a name other than Clock?" Taylor asked.

"Dennis," Dennis replied as he held out his hand.

Taylor shook his hand with a grin. "Nice to meet you."

Amy turned her attention back to the dancing. "Have you found anything interesting in the Tower?"

Taylor grinned as she thought about the loot she'd found so far. "A cloak that changes color to match your surroundings, a couple of libraries filled with books that I'm copying into my grimoire before I hand them off to Verin and a bunch of magical trinkets that I want to figure out how to duplicate, mostly the magical loom that creates the stealth cloth when you feed it mana."

"Endless puppets?" Dennis asked thoughtfully.

"It's certainly going to improve the quality of my puppets but I was actually thinking about using it for high quality cloth armor for the students," Taylor glanced at Amy, "unless I can talk Amy into creating a fire immune creature we can duplicate and skin for quality leather."

Amy pulled her attention away from Elayne and Rand and looked at Skitter. "That depends, have you had any luck duplicating the lab rat?"

"Shaper says the rats are stable but I'm still getting weird fur colors," Taylor admitted.

Dennis grinned. "That's a feature, not a glitch."

Taylor opened her mouth to argue then paused when she realized he might have a point. "Let me check something," she said, quickly summoning her grimoire and opening it to the page with her duplication spell. "Huh, the color changing part is actually intentional."

"Why would they make the spell more complicated than it needs to be?" Amy asked.

"No idea," Taylor admitted as she worked her way through the spell's schematic, trying to understand how it worked and what she was doing wrong.

"Does that mean you're casting the spell right?" Dennis asked as he turned his attention back to the dancers.

"Maybe? It might be a visualization thing or maybe you get a random result if you're not concentrating on a color," Taylor mused as she had her other puppet cast the spell again, getting a light purple rat when she'd been trying for a darker shade of purple. "I'm getting closer, I actually managed to get a light purple when I was aiming for purple."

"It could have been a fluke," Amy pointed out.

Taylor used her inspection ability on herself to check for scrying effects then focused on the cup sitting on the coffee table and cast her duplication spell, creating a 'perfect' replica of her father's blue union mug. "It's close enough for leather."

"What did you want to modify?" Amy asked as she glanced over at where Admin was dancing with one of Taylor's other puppets.

"How about a cow?" Taylor asked thoughtfully as she let her grimoire vanish. "They have plenty of leather and we can give people hamburger or beef which should help with the food shortages we're going to be dealing with until we can sort out the transportation issues."

"Do you even know how to butcher a cow?" Dennis asked as one of the local girls walked towards them.

"Yeah, it falls under cooking and leatherworking," Taylor replied as she opened her inventory and pulled the amber plaque out that her other puppet had just stuck in her inventory. "Some of these are almost more useful because of the material."

Amy turned and looked at the plaque. "What does it do?"

"It's a dreamweaver, if you channel a bit of spirit magic into it, you'll fall asleep and enter the world of dreams," Taylor explained. "It's also hard enough to scratch steel and remarkably durable despite being amber."

"Can you duplicate it?" Amy asked, curious if Skitter's duplication spell would let them mass produce magical items.

"It's worth a shot." Taylor cast her duplication spell on the clear amber plaque, creating an identical looking copy. She used her inspection skill on the duplicated plague, not particularly surprised when the duplicate wasn't a sleepweaver like the original. "It's not a sleepweaver but it's still extremely durable."

"That's almost more useful," Dennis said thoughtfully as Calle Coplin stopped in front of him. "What's up?"

"Do you want to dance?" she asked hopefully, wanting something to distract her from the fact that her home was a pile of ash and most of her family was dead.

"Of course," Dennis replied as he bounced to his feet and accepted her arm.

Taylor glanced at Amy. "Should we join them?"

Amy glanced over at Elayne. "Might as well, I wouldn't mind stealing a dance with Elayne."

Taylor glanced over at where Elayne was dancing with Rand. "I wouldn't mind stealing a dance with Rand before Egwene claims him for another dance."

"Perfect," Amy replied with a grin as she took Skitter's hands and they proceeded to dance towards the other 'couple'.

"Any idea what it's going to take to get her to agree to the ritual?" Taylor asked thoughtfully.

"Getting her to agree is probably going to be easier than getting her to go through with it, I suggest copious amounts of alcohol and the promise of advanced training," Amy replied after a couple of seconds of thought.

"Isn't that a bit morally suspect?" Taylor asked.

"As long as we pitch the deal while she's sober, I'm not going to lose sleep over her being a bit tipsy when we start the ritual," Amy replied in a whisper. "If she wasn't the only person we've found with a talent for crafting ter'angreal, I wouldn't bother but we're going up against a dark god and we need an edge."

"This would be a lot easier if you could just give people the talents," Taylor replied as they avoided a couple of teenagers that weren't paying enough attention in where they were dancing.

Amy stepped back and pulled Skitter with her to avoid a couple of kids running through the village green chasing a dog. "I'd be happy if the clones could boost a channeler's talents to a reasonable degree but they can't, which means working with what we've got."

"Makes sense," Taylor replied as they reached Rand and Elayne as the other 'couple' finished their dance. "Can I have the next dance?"

"I could use a break," Elayne admitted, more than a little thirsty.

Rand smiled as he held out his hand towards the strange young lady. "Of course."

"Here." Amy conjured a mug of cider and handed it to Elayne as Rand and Skitter started dancing to the gleeman's harp. "Are you willing to do the ritual before you head back or did you need a couple of days to think about it?"

Elayne nearly choked on her apple cider, her face going scarlet as her mind conjured images of her and Rand on a bed with Skitter watching. "What exactly are you offering and do you have anything alcoholic?" she asked after a couple of seconds of weighing her future embarrassment against the possibility of permanently improving her talents.

"Advanced training and time with some of the most powerful channelers and magic users you're going to run into which should improve your talents and might even give you a mana pool which would give you access to spells and magic that channelers can't duplicate," Amy offered.

"I'm going to need to know a bit more about the ritual," Elayne glanced at Rand, "and pick the men."

"That shouldn't be a problem," Amy replied, knowing she'd probably need some liquid courage to deal with the ritual herself.

0o0o0

Taylor's puppet closed the cursed tome she'd just finished crafting and blinked a couple of times as she 'woke up' and everything else came rushing back, the ritual one of her advanced puppets was in the middle of where she was tongue fucking Egwene, the puppet that was talking to the Green Man in the abandoned world, the puppet that was walking through the dust covered hold in the Stone of Tear looting everything she could that was actually magic or otherwise valuable, the various puppets that were looting the abandoned tower to the ground and her body which was curled up on the couch watching monster movies with her father and grandmother.

The puppet shook her head, trying to clear some of the cobwebs, then used her inspection ability and looked at the cursed book she'd just finished creating. 'Book of the End? This indestructible book continuously absorbs ambient magical energy, using the magic to fuel the creation of cursed spells and terrifying creatures that may be unleashed from the tome by the unwise.'

She slipped the cursed book into her inventory then summoned her grimoire and looked at the notes for her schematic for random cursed books. 'Usefulness and power of the resulting books are random but tend to scale with skill and magical power, yeah that wasn't here before. Then again, this is the first time I've actually used it outside of the simulation.'

"Let's see if this works," Taylor mused then opened a portal to Egwene's world over Taren Ferry and flew through, figuring no one would see her since it was dark and it was a thousand feet above the city. She closed the portal behind her and focused on getting to Shadar Logoth, using her compass ability to figure out where she was supposed to open a portal. She opened a portal a mile away from the cursed city then flew through and looked around, wishing she had some method of seeing in the dark because the moon didn't give nearly enough light to make her comfortable with her insane plan. 'At least I'm not actually here.'

Taylor closed the portal then headed towards the dark line she could see in the distance that her compass ability was 'pulling' her towards. 'Hopefully the fog counts as a magical effect rather than a creature.'

She shivered as she got close enough to see the twisted silvery fog that covered most of the city. 'I need some line of sight combat spells,' she thought as she flew down towards the wall, staying at least ten feet away from the stone. She looked at the stone with her inspection ability and promptly added a couple more feet of distance when she realized that the legends hadn't lied when they claimed that even the stones were corrupted. "I wonder if dropping them into the fog would kill the endbringers?"

Taylor considered the idea for a couple of minutes before deciding that the endbringers would probably survive and become more dangerous. She raised her hands and cast her rain dance spell, causing a forty yard radius cloud to appear over a section of fog and start blasting the fog with bolts of water that merely sloshed through the fog without actually doing anything to the annoyingly resilient entity.

"So much for doing things the easy way," Taylor muttered then gestured and called down a pillar of eldritch fire on the fog, obliterating any trace of the fog in the area and melting the stone. She reflexively teleported thirty yards away from the city when several tentacles of fog erupted out of the fog and tried to kill her, moving faster than most arrows. She sighed in relief when the tentacles stopped at the edge of the wall.

[Missy wanted me to tell you that Jaina and Illidan have finished their project. Can you come to the Waygate?], Expanse asked Skitter.

{Thank you and I'm on my way}, Taylor replied as she opened a void portal to twelve feet above the clearing near the waygate and stepped through, curious what the two archmages had come up with to deal with the tainted magic floating in the Ways. She glanced between Illidan, Jaina and the open Waygate then focused on the strange beach ball sized, rune covered crystal sphere with a bunch of saronite spigots sticking out of the bottom that was floating next to Illidan. "Does it work?"

"For a given value of work," Illidan replied with a shrug. "It certainly pulls the tainted miasma from the air and condenses it into a highly toxic and caustic sludge, the problem is that containing the sludge for any length of time is problematic."

"We ended up having to toss it into the Ways when it started to eat the container," Jaina admitted, wishing she had access to Dalaran's library for better containment methods.

"I might have a solution," Taylor replied as she pulled a length of garden hose and one of the swords she'd stolen from the fades out of her inventory. She used Lisa's trick and transferred the corruption resistance to the garden hose, causing the sword to crumble to dust and vanish. She checked the hose with her inspection power. "That should cover corruption resistance."

"That should give it a couple of seconds," Jaina said thoughtfully.

Taylor pulled several chunks of saronite out of her inventory and started moving their various resistances and immunities to the hose to be on the safe side then did the same with the durability from the duplicated amber plaque. She grinned when she inspected the hose and noticed the overlapping protections which should keep everything from melting for at least a couple of hours if not years.

'Okay, if I can keep everything from melting, my book should be able to eat the magic, especially if I can use the antithesis property from the Shadar Logoth items to keep everything spinning while the book rips the magic out of the sludge,' she mused as she sent one of her cloth minions to work on the container that she was going to need.

Missy stepped out of the open waygate looking a little green. "Please tell me you have a solution for getting rid of the sludge that doesn't involve sending it into the void."

"In theory." Taylor cast her duplication spell on the hose then checked the duplicate, rather pleased to find that she'd made a 'perfect' copy or at least all of the numbers and qualities were the same as the original. "I have an indestructible book that eats ambient magic, it should be able to eat the sludge."

Missy stared at Skitter. "Where did you get that?"

"I got the pattern from Archeology," Taylor replied with a grin as she handed Missy the extra hose to attach to the floating device.

"Cheater," Missy grumbled good naturedly as she worked on screwing the hose onto one of the spigots while Skitter created enough duplicates to cover the rest of the spigots. "Have you figured out what you're going to do with the sludge that the book doesn't eat?"

"Yeah, I'm going to pipe it into a corrupted city," Taylor replied then went back to work duplicating the hoses.

"Which one?" Missy asked warily as she grabbed another hose and got to work attaching it.

"Shadar Logoth, it's an abandoned death trap not too far from Taren Ferry and Baerlon," Taylor explained as she finished checking the hoses, wanting to make sure everything was in perfect working order as she didn't want the hoses splaying the sludge anywhere close to her friends or her puppet. "Can you explain what you're planning on doing with the space in the Ways?"

Missy grinned as she thought about the twisted nature of the Ways. "Expanse and I are basically going to condense it so the device can pull more of the tainted magic out of the surrounding area then shove the untainted space to the side and grab more. We might have to move around a bit but that shouldn't be a problem."

"You're the expert," Taylor replied as she handed Missy half the hoses then got to work with her half after sticking the original back in her inventory so her other puppet could copy it and move the qualities to the box she was making.

0o0o0

Mat Cauthon raised his mug of cider when Egwene walked out of the tent dressed in a silk outfit that left little to the imagination but technically covered everything it should. "How are you feeling?"

"Conflicted," Egwene admitted as she walked over and sat on the bench by the campfire next to Mat, glad that Skitter's healing spell had dealt with her physical issues because otherwise she wasn't sure she would have been moving, let alone walking around.

"About the fact that we…" Mat asked, trailing off because he wasn't sure how to feel about the fact that he'd had sex with Rand's girlfriend while a decent collection of the girls he knew watched and cheered.

"More that I enjoyed the rest of it," Egwene admitted, thinking about her time with Amy, Skitter, Elayne and Mat's sisters. "I spent the last couple of years thinking that I'd end up with Rand, it's weird thinking that he might end up with someone else. I saw him and Elayne together, they fit."

"And you don't?" Mat asked as he handed her one of the other mugs filled with cider that Skitter had conjured.

Egwene blushed as she thought about her time with Rand. "We fit, it's just I don't think she's going anywhere and she's fun, at least when she's tipsy enough to have fun. If you repeat that, I'll deny it."

"I'm not going to judge," Mat promised.

Egwene gave him a look. "Seriously?"

"How many talents did you pick up?" Mat asked.

"Cloud dancing and a halfway decent ter'angreal talent from Elayne. I think I picked up a couple more points of some of my earth related talents from your sisters and healing from one of the other girls," Egwene said, not sure where the healing talent came from as a couple of the girls had the ability. "You?"

"A little bit of everything," Mat admitted, relieved that he couldn't channel saidin and that he wasn't the Dragon Reborn. "At least the Aes Sedai can't shield me and I don't have to worry about going mad…" he trailed off as he got a vision of a couple of seconds of a battle, from the perspective of the general.

'Which means it's either Rand or Perin,' Egwene thought as she sipped her cider, giving Mat time to gather his thoughts.

0o0o0