Mist of Shadows

Dungeon Myst Part 30

"How long until it explodes?" Myst asked the gremlin tinker as he studied the brass scope that looked like it would be right at home in a steampunk movie.

"It's not going to explode," the gremlin engineer complained.

"Are you grumpy because I'm questioning your abilities or because it's not going to explode?" Myst asked as he picked the brass scope up and tried to judge the weight.

"Yes," the gremlin replied without hesitation.

"That's fair," Myst admitted as he brough...

Dungeon Myst Part 29

"Hellooooooo Nurse!" Vivian said when she saw the attractive redhead follow Myst out of the portal wearing a sheer nurse's outfit.

"Hello yourself," Amy replied with a grin as she looked at the naked blue haired girl that looked a few years younger than her.

"Where did you find the girls?" Vivian asked Myst as she glanced over the rest of the girls.

"I was practicing my wench conjuration skill," Myst replied as he glanced around the courtyard, wanting to make sure nothing wa...

Dungeon Myst Part 28

"Neat," Harry said when the teacher finished her lecture on the nature of alchemy and he got a notice informing him that he'd received a quick alchemy trait.

"In general," Julia Frankenstein said cheerfully. "Alchemy is a rewarding vocation, especially if you're willing to put the time into it to master the basics."

"The basics?" Xander asked.

"If anyone ever tells you that they've mastered alchemy and they're not a god, they're lying," Julia replied. "I doubt even most gods...

Dungeon Myst Part 27

"Two galleons for one gold coin," the goblin offered with a smug grin, knowing he was ripping the man off but figuring most wizards wouldn't even question the exchange rate.

Myst glared at the goblin, wondering if he should have let someone else deal with the goblins since he wasn't a fan to start with and he'd spent the last couple of hours helping pluck and gut the geese that had been killing his gremlins, which hadn't helped his mood even if the Cooking experience was nice. "Do you k...

Dungeon Myst Part 26

"Hey!" a gremlin complained as he dodged out of the way of Myst stepping on him. "Watch where you're going!"

"Sorry," Myst offered as he pulled his attention off Lara's naked behind and concentrated on walking down the hallway and not stepping on gremlins. He frowned when he noticed that he had several warnings informing him that half of his miners were exhausted. "Weird," he muttered as he looked at the mining logs. 'Huh, eldritch stone, mithril ore, mithril ore, eldritch stone…' He ...

Dungeon Myst Part 25

Dawn pulled her attention away from the crystal walls and the recessed areas that would be perfect for statues and followed Xander into the classroom. "Now what?"

Willow glanced around the room that had a number of purple massage benches as well as drawing tables. "I'm guessing we wait for the teacher."

Hermione blinked when she noticed a Classroom buff on her HUD. "Why do we get more experience if we're naked?"

Buffy turned to look at Hermione. "What?"

"Look at the cl...

Dungeon Myst Part 24

"Are you hungover?" Buffy asked as Xander and Dawn walked over to the portal, noticing that he looked like hell.

"I'm not hungover, I'm just exhausted and the walls need soundproofing," Xander complained with a yawn, wishing that he'd gotten a couple of more hours of sleep before being woken up for round eight or nine, he'd lost track at some point after Vivian had shown up at the room and created Alex.

"How come you look chipper?" Buffy asked Dawn.

"I stole the last of Myst...

Dungeon Myst Part 23

Myst pulled his attention away from the stars when he felt his mana pool fill up completely. 'This would be easier if I had a decent source of gems,' he mentally grumbled as he cast his Resource Node spell, conjuring yet another foil card. 'Phasezinc? This node of magically altered zinc will drop out of phase with organic material when an electrical charge is run through it. I wonder if I can make something interesting by mixing the zinc and the shadow copper I got from the other node?'

Dungeon Myst Part 22

"You're lucky that Bugs isn't around," Xander pointed out as he watched the skeleton drop yet another conjured rabbit into the well.

"I'd appreciate it if you avoided saying the names of eldritch abominations or cartoon characters that might decide to pay us a visit," Myst complained as he conjured another rabbit over the well, causing the fluffy white bunny to drop and vanish into the mist.

"Do you honestly think saying his name is going to summon him?" Xander asked.

"It wo...

Dungeon Myst Part 21

Myst pulled his attention off the small group of gremlins that were milling around and picking fights with each other while they waited for him to extract their magic and focused on the unstable mana crystals piling up in his inventory that his minions had been collecting from the floating platform and around the structures that he'd made while the mana scale curse was active. 'Each crystal of unstable mana is worth between five and twenty mana and introduces a chaotic elemental in anything t...

Dungeon Myst Part 20

Myst blinked when he suddenly found himself next to his dungeon crystal. "What the fuck?" he complained as he opened his combat log. 'Marvin: Firebolt one hundred and seven damage.' He pulled up his minion list and rang a search for any Marvins as he slipped past the basilisk and headed for the exit to the cave. 'Yeah, I don't remember that being a common name in the Two Rivers, which means something weird is going on.'

He set the gremlins without magic on alert and told them to start w...

Dungeon Myst Part 19

Myst pulled up the sheet for the new teacher and looked at the picture of the stunning redhead that was wearing an unbuttoned lab coat, a hair tie to tie her long hair back with and nothing else. 'She could be on the cover of a magazine. Julia Frankenstein?' He glanced at her Gifted Teacher talent that let her teach four times the students then looked at her negative trait. 'Obsession with hiding lawn gnomes in the homes of unsuspecting people in her neighborhood? Yeah, that's a bit crazy but...

Dungeon Myst Part 18

Myst selected the option to sacrifice people again to summon another teacher then watched the video. He frowned when he noticed the person they summoned looked like a typical drill sergeant wearing shorts and a t-shirt.

"Mr. West, this sadistic gym teacher from L.A. makes the students play dodgeball, run suicide runs and play various team sports until they're ready to fall over so they'll pay more attention in the rest of their classes. He also has the basic teaching talent which means ...

Dungeon Myst Part 17

"Are you sure you should be touching that…" Thea trailed off as Dawn poked the portal frame and a menu appeared floating where a portal would have been.

"Nice, it has a menu," Dawn said as she looked over the available options. "City Under the Ocean, Demon Town, Desert Planet, Infinite Shop, Magic Base, Magic Girl Town and an option to hack the portal, what do you think?"

"We should probably avoid trying something that could break the portal without permission which means hackin...

Dungeon Myst Part 16

The dust made Harry feel better about slipping into the room, mostly because it was obvious that no one had visited for a long time. He glanced at the dust covered bed that was perfectly made then at the small kitchen and the door to a more modest bathroom then focused on the glass coffin with a girl in it. He walked over and picked up the old fashioned postcard that was leaned up against the coffin. 'In case of emergency, say Avalon and kiss the princess awake?'

Harry briefly considere...

Dungeon Myst Part 15

Harry scowled when a particularly loud crash caused him to miss the spot that he was trying to hit on the Thaumium silver blade that he was trying to craft, making the metal 'ring' in a way that it shouldn't. "So much for making a perfect blade," he muttered as he dropped the blade into the oil.

"Blacksmithing increased by 1," the voice announced.

Harry pulled the ugly chunk of vaguely sword shaped Thaumium silver that had taken most of his mana to forge out of th...

Dungeon Myst Part 14

Harry ignored the goblins that were pounding on the metal door that he'd wedged shut as he ran a polishing cloth over the metal wand that he'd spent the last couple of minutes welding together out of the silver rods the goblins had.

"Wand polishing skill increased by 1. Polishing skill increased by 1," the voice announced.

"Finally!" Harry exclaimed as he tossed the polishing cloth back in his inventory and opened the menu for his Transmogrify skill. He dropped th...

Dungeon Myst Part 13

"Is this what Snyder felt like all the time?" Buffy asked thoughtfully as she watched the horde of gremlins running down the hallways of the cobbled together school like children on a sugar high.

"Probably," Xander agreed as he pulled his attention away from the gremlin that was drawing a crude drawing on the wall with a black marker and focused on the gremlin that was trying to climb up a banner to get to one of the torches set into the wall. "I'm surprised the school doesn't have a ha...

Dungeon Myst Part 12

Harry carefully inched around the stalagmite until he could just barely see the rickety wooden bridge that stretched across the boiling and steaming water that covered the bottom of the cavern, mostly because if he moved another inch he'd get spotted by a goblin lookout and he was trying to avoid alerting the entire army to his presence. 'Okay, third time's the charm.' He waited for the patrolling scout to walk back into the tunnel. 'Five seconds, then ten to kill the goblin lookout before th...

Dungeon Myst Part 11

Myst glared at the gremlin that he'd trapped in the rusty old fashioned metal milk crate that one of his minions had pulled out of the junk pile. "You were trying to set people on fire, justify your existence."

"Is gremlin!" the idiot replied as he flipped Myst off with both hands, not seeing a point in listening to anyone in authority.

"Never mind," Myst muttered and used his magic extraction spell on the idiot with the Stupid and Anti-authority traits that also happened to have ...

Dungeon Myst Part 10

"Incoming slimes!" Myst shouted as he flew towards the edge of the platform and pulled up the build menu. He quickly placed twelve five foot squares of float stone next to the narrow platform of float stone with the wells and hit the button two seconds before his mana regenerated, making his total jump almost to his max. He quickly placed another twenty eight five foot squares next to the previous squares and hit the button.

"Calm down," the mage complained as he walked out of the works...

Dungeon Myst Part 9

Harry glared at the goblin banker. "Let me get this straight, you're using my family's money to make a profit but you're unwilling to share the profit or let me change the way the money is set up because I'm underage?"

"That is correct," the goblin replied smugly. "We've made quite a lot of money off of your family in recent years as you can see from the reports that we're legally required to give you."

"The ones that you wrote in weird scratches and runes?" Harry asked with annoy...

Dungeon Myst Part 8

"Fifty nine rabbits on the wall, take one down and pass it around…" Myst trailed off as he watched the rabbit he'd just conjured strike the ground with his paw twice and summon a ghostly tophat. "What the hell?" he sputtered as he pulled up the rabbit's stat sheet, noticing that the rabbit had two points of magic and the arcane affinity.

'How the fuck does a rabbit have magic?' he asked himself as he flew down and grabbed the rabbit, glad that he'd summoned the creature away from the ...

Dungeon Myst Part 7

Myst added another tainted mana stone he'd mined from the cave in the well to the upgrade box for his mana pool, bringing the mana up to nine hundred and eighteen from eight hundred and ninety one. "Close enough," he muttered as he selected the option to pay the rest from his mana pool. 'At least the mana crystals count as gems and mana,' he mused as he tossed in a couple of crystal skulls to push the required units of gems past a thousand. He stared at the options that appeared on the screen...

Dungeon Myst Part 6

Myst shivered as his HUD tossed up an alert informing him that his Wicked Workshop was done and the simple stone foundation that was serving as a placeholder for his new workshop changed into a twisted stone building with a slate roof and dark shutters that leaked a sickly green light that made his skin crawl. "That better not be fell energy," he muttered as he opened the menu for his new workshop and looked at his options.

"Huh," he muttered when he saw the option for creating a gremli...

Dungeon Myst Part 5

Myst twitched and nearly fell off the edge of the stone platform when his HUD's alarm went off, letting him know that the smelter was done and pulling him out of his thoughts. He turned to look at the smelter and found himself staring at a large grime covered cobblestone building with three crooked chimneys sticking out of a shoddy slate roof, distracting him from the fact that he'd been drifting for a couple of hours.

"Pretty sure a group of fifth graders could make a better structure,...

Taylor and Marvel Madness Part 13

Taylor stepped out of the portal that led to an alternate version of Scotland and found herself in the Great Hall during the middle of a meal. "Huh…" she trailed off when she looked up and noticed the enchanted ceiling filled with stars. 'Hogwarts!'

"What is the meaning of this?!" snapped a short woman sitting at the teacher's table.

Taylor pulled her attention off the enchanted ceiling and glanced at the grumpy looking woman that looked like a toad. 'Someone looks unhappy to se...

Taylor and Marvel Madness Part 12

"You're a cheating bastard," Vicky complained as Uber cut her off in the racing game they were playing.

"I'm a villain, what did you expect?" Uber asked with amusement.

"Pretty sure you just suck," Noelle argued as she had her character swerve to the left, hit the brakes then swerve back to the right, forcing Leet's character off the road and into the ravine. She twisted the joysticks just the right way to spin the car so it was facing the bump on the edge of the road and hit the ...

Taylor and Marvel Madness Part 11

Danny paused as he walked into the conference room and found his daughter laughing along with a pair of elves and one of his duplicates. "If you start cackling without a good reason, you're grounded," he teased, glad that she was having fun.

"Muahahaha," Taylor replied as she turned to look at her father, using her Sound Manipulation ability to make her voice echo and her Illusion-Casting to change her BDUs into an evil looking black dress straight out of a Disney movie.

'Probably...

Taylor and Marvel Madness Part 10

Taylor stared at the ceiling over her surprisingly comfortable bed, trying to figure out if her duplicates were insane or if she needed to talk to a shrink, mostly because she'd enjoyed watching Emma take a shower with Clairvoyance or at least her duplicate had. 'She's a backstabbing bitch, why do I like the way her ass looks covered in soap? Or did I enjoy it because she's in jail?'

'Screw it, worrying about it isn't going to help,' Taylor told herself, trying to avoid focusing on her ...