Industrial Strength Magic

Chapter 203: SCP Perry

The light of the sun was replaced by the glare of a fluorescent bulb in the top of the polished steel box that Perry suddenly found himself in. His ears popped from the sudden change in pressure, causing him to wince.

Then Perry saw Charles Frepon standing in front of him, and everything became clear. This was a kidnapping.

Buy time and send out an S.O.S.

Perry’s computer back at home was connected to his mind via artificially grown skin and Mind Taker ichor. He should be able to connect to it from anywhere.

“Before you say anything,” Perry said, holding up a hand to forestall his uncle, who was flanked by a chevron of iron-faced mages of varying species.

“I am impressed, and I am scared, but I just wanna let all of you know that this kind of situation has the unfortunate side-effect of bringing out the serial killer in me,” Perry said in his most even tone, tapping himself in the chest to emphasize his statement.

“So if you don’t want that Perry pulling out all your teeth before forcing you to cook pieces of yourself and feed them to your family, maybe reconsider this course of action?”

No response from the computer. DAMN. Hopefully the threats had some effect.

“You done?” Charles asked.

“Sure, go ahead,” Perry said, motioning for Charles to take his turn. He’d been a polite enough kidnapper to allow Perry to explain how this was going to end, after all.

“You’re on Manita.” Charles said.

Perry’s eyebrows rose.

“At the bottom of an ocean trench,” Charles continued.

Perry’s brows continued to climb skyward.

“in a time dilating facility.”

Perry had reached maximum agog.

“Designed to automatically counter any spell you may have access to.”

PPP.EXE

(4/6) remaining.

A black sludge dripped out of Perry’s palm, quickly rendered nonmagical and splattering on the solid steel flooring beneath him. From what he could perceive, there were multiple emitters housed on the outside of the facility that would emit frequencies that disrupted out certain common essence ingredients that acted as the power supply for the vast majority of spells: Vivant root, power stone, Lunt bone.

Saying it countered any spells showed a lack of understanding or deliberate obfuscation of its effects, but it was still a pain in the ass.

Dragor’s Kinesis should work then, Perry thought. It didn’t use standard spell-powering ingredients, and was pretty rare for people to use due to it’s inherent danger.

Dragor’s Kinesis.EXE

(2/3) remaining.

A sudden intrusive thought of slamming himself into the floor invaded his mind, and Perry canceled the spell before he could squish himself, staggering in place.

“Dragor’s kinesis is a very rare spell, but easily countered with Call of the Void.” Charles said with a mischievous smirk.

“I showed it to George,” Perry said with a sigh, scanning the surrounding mages and wondering which one had done the deed.

“He was very impressed.”

“Well, shit,” Perry muttered, frowning down at the nonmagical black tar pooling on the floor. hmm.

“If any of the security equipment breaks, disconnects or malfunctions, the entire facility is rigged to implode and bury you under miles of water, and tens of thousands of pounds of pressure. Quite literally crushing you into a meaty pulp.” Charles continued. “There is no way in or out. Only death.”

Well, if they’re trying to steal Abun’zaul, there has to be a way to ship that out, but it’s not like I could hitch a ride, so I guess his point stands.

“What’s with the security?” Perry asked, glancing back up at his uncle. “Am I a SCP or something?”

“I’m just trying to impress on you the importance of not acting rashly.”

Perry had to admit, he kind of was an SCP. The ‘facility’ they were in seemed to be crafted from solid steel with eye-searing fluorescent lights, not a single consideration was made to the comfort of the residents. He had a couple ideas for how to get out already, but none of them could be done with an audience.

His uncle stepped closer.

“You, nephew, have Abun’zaul as a symbiotic spirit.” Charles continued. “I am going to use our time together here to extract it and oust your grandmother as King of Manita.”

“I don’t think that’ll work out for you,” Perry said, flickering forward and aiming a bone-shattering kick at Charles’ face.

His uncle flew backwards like a ragdoll, but Perry instantly knew something was wrong.

The blue-eyed man slumped against the steel wall for a moment before he climbed to his feet, sporting a spiderweb of black cracks in his porcelain skin that seemed to ooze darkness. Perry’s uncle smoothed out a bit of cracking around his jaw with a thumb, the black lines disappearing in seconds.

“Also, neither I, nor any of my compatriots are actually here.” Charles said. “I’m still at the party with your replacement. I’ve made him just as much of an ass as you, by the way. It’ll take people a long time to notice the replacement.”

Perry’s eyes narrowed. Depending on what kind of doppleganger it was, that could work out to his advantage, but he should assume it was going to work on his behalf. Copies weren’t supposed to be that good. He was just used to the concept of ‘perfect copies’ with Abun’zaul.

How did he get magic like that under Gramma’s nose? Perry thought back to his grandmother’s dark expression as she stalked towards Tyrannus.

Was still stalking towards Tyrannus, presumably, if Perry was under a strong enough time dilation.

…Was Tyrannus doing something to keep her busy? Gramma wasn’t on the list of people Tyrannus couldn’t mess with, so the possibility was there.

Seemingly reading Perry’s expression, Charles held up his hands with a flourish.

“Basic concept of stage magic,” he said. “Distract the audience with brand-new babies and a creature straight out of myth and legend...” He manifested a bright red ball and a blue ball in his left hand, along with a yellow ball in his right.

Charles waggled the two balls in his left hand while tucking the yellow ball up his sleeve, surprisingly adroit.

“Palm the other.”

“I didn’t know you did magic tricks.” Perry said.

“George had a phase,” Charles said with a shrug, tucking the props away in his gilded manitian vest. “And I found it to be a good way of teaching him public speaking and certain political concepts.”

“Dad of the century,” Perry said, rolling his eyes.

“I should think so, if my children inherit the crown.”

“Point. But what if the only thing you earn them is the opportunity to see their dad get splinters up his ass?” Perry asked.

Charles’ eye twitched.

“I think this conversation has come full circle. Let’s get you to the extractor.”

Perry tried to resist, but unlike him, their magic wasn’t under the effect of noise-cancelling headphones, and super strength will only get you so far.

He didn’t take Charles’ word on anything, so he punched and kicked more than a few of the other mages present, only to find that they too were inhabiting the same porcelain filled with inky blackness.

Damn, I was hoping maybe some of them could be threatened with death, Perry thought as they swaddled him up in magical bands of force and carried him to the ‘extractor’.

Perry recognized what it was the moment he saw it and started wiggling much harder.

It was a beefed-up version of Pecholard’s Symbiotic Spirit ritual circle. The basic concept was that it melted the body away from the soul, while doing as little damage to the soul as possible. Preserving it in a state of almost-alive.

Interesting stuff, if horrific.

Perry immediately started struggling.

“You’ve got some kind of leash preventing Abun’zaul from consuming you.” Charles said as his minions sealed Perry in solid crystal from the neck down, floating him above the circle. “We’ll need to preserve and study that as well as Abun’zaul, so a typical removal won’t work.”

He tried to use his spendthrift perk to make the crystal brittle and weak, but the nature of the material made it damn-near impossible to modify. It was made to be power-transparent. Not specifically to defend against him, so much as it was meant to allow the magic to flow through and melt him.

Despite having the strength of several people, he couldn’t put it to good use when every inch of his body was compressed by the crystal. He couldn’t even wiggle a finger. Perry tried to jerk his head side to side to crack the crystal, but came away with nothing more than a dizzy spell and a sprained neck.

“Any last words?” Charles asked, standing outside the circle.

This is it. They’re really gonna kill me, Perry thought, his breath becoming ragged and uneven as his body demanded that he do ANYTHING, even try to gnaw the crystal like a trapped animal.The hyperoxygenation and adrenaline had him seeing stars.His heart was hammering so hard he could barelyhear his uncle.

I don’t wanna to die scared.

Sliding Stats

Stability 61 -> 55

Attunement 61 -> 67

A soothing cold flooded Perry’sbody and mind, and he relaxed in the crystal cocoon.

“Damn you for making me look like the asshole,” Perry said, making direct eye contact with his uncle’s puppet.

New Quest! Shove a piece of furniture up your uncle’s ass at Christmas Dinner.

Reward: 1000XP, fear from the Frepon family, Respect from Marigold Zauberer

Perry smiled at the thought.

Charles looked a bit confused, but shrugged before nodding to his minions. A moment later the crystal began crawling up his chin.

Perry modified the oxygen in the air as he breathed in with his Spendthrift Perk, changing it’s chemical properties to allow it to sustain him longer.

It wasn’t the way oxygen worked, but he didn’t have much to lose.

A moment later the crystal covered his mouth, nose, and finally his eyes, locking him completely still as the circle beneath him fired up.

The subject needed to be perfectly still so that their jostling didn’t cause damage or disruption. Since the soul followed the body’s physical position, a single errant twitch could cause the delicate material to suffer damage as it was painstakingly peeled away from the body.

Knowing exactly what was happening, and why, didn’t make things better.

Perry felt a bit of tingle in his skin, his heart hammering in his chest as he recognized the beginning of the melting process.

Except he didn’t melt.

One minute.

Five.

Ten.

The tingling never quite grew beyond the faintest sensation, and about fifteen minutes later, when Perry was beginning to think he’d pass out from oxygen deprivation, he saw George say something to his compatriots, making a sharp motion with his hand.

Perry gasped in a lungful of sweet air as the crystal retracted from his face.

“At ease, gentlemen, we knew it wouldn’t be easy going into this,” Charles said as the crystal crawled out of his ears. “We have all the tools at our disposal to make this happen.” He glanced back up at Perry. “And we have all the time in the world.”

“Could somebody scratch my nose?” Perry asked.

They dispelled the crystal, wrapped him up in magical force and dragged him to a cell, unceremoniously throwing him in.

Two of the mages stayed behind to watch him, a short morfin, which was a toadlike humanoid with a dual crest on the sides of its head, and a human male. A bit younger than the others. Their best and brightest were working on solving the problem.

“So, you guys run into a snag?” Perry asked, leaning up against the side of his cell. He knew exactly what the ‘snag’ was. An illustration of the basic problem was trying to chip an egg out of solid granite without cracking it.

In short, Perry’s Body was so tough that the power tools they would need to melt it would likely cause damage to the juicy magical bits inside.

“Shut up,” the younger mage said.

Perry met the puppet’s gaze, deliberating.

I can work with this.

Despite being in a facility designed specifically to kill him, Perry fell into a routine as the days turned into weeks. The place was big, and he was only allowed to see a tiny snippet of it.

The cell they housed him in, and the place they dragged him to run tests. They were making progress, Perry knew, but so was he.

He was gathering information.

This place was older than he was, that much was clear. What few comfort elements were present hailed from the seventies. There was a lamp and couch in an unused side room that he’d gotten a glance at while they hauled him by that looked straight out of a sitcom.

But the ‘facility’ had also been updated recently, judging by the modern tech and shiny, untarnished steel walls.

The melting circle was old and the stuff connecting to it was new.

This facility was meant for my aunt. Perry thought, connecting the dots. It had originally been started when Abun’zaul was placed in a young girl over fifty years ago.

Then she died, and the spirit was hidden away under lock and key, and Charles’ father abandoned the place.

Then Perry was born and they started renovating in case it was ever needed.

Interesting history lesson there. Given the pre-meditated nature of Perry’s kidnapping/attempted murder, he was more and more inclined to just exterminate his extended family as time went by.

Perry’s guards rotated every four hours or so, and over the weeks, he identified which pairs were more distractable and which were not.

His Spendthrift Perk still worked. His Multi-tool perk still worked, confirmed by summoning a thimble out of sight, then dismissing it. That would be crucial to escaping, but he couldn’t allow them to know he could do it.

After two weeks, they tried to melt him in the crystal again, and Perry simply raised his Body with Sliding stats.

Another three weeks later, they put him in again, and he lowered his Body, forcing them to abort the process before his soul was damaged.

That one hurt.

The next time he fluctuated his Body at different hertz to throw them off. That one hurt, too, but they aborted before he was lethally damaged.

And so the time went by, and they settled into a routine of aborted meltings, some more successful than others. Thankfully they always let him fully recover between attempts, not wanting to foul anything up with an already-damaged body.

Perry turned his Body down during the healing stints, in order to buy himself as much time as possible between each attempt.

One day, the Distractable Duo –as Perry liked to call them– got so caught up in their dice game that Perry was able to summon what he needed.

It was a tool that hadn’t existed until recently, but it was a tool.

The tightly packed panel of crystals appeared in his bandaged hand and Perry cast the Pernicious Prison.

PPP.EXE

As expected, the tar dribbled out of his hand and accomplished nothing of note, but Perry was more interested in the readings from his rudimentary Essence wavelength detector.

Perry cast every spell in his arsenal, shifting a couple feet every time he did, then dismissed the scanner once he had triangulated the position of the counterspelling machines.

There were a dozen of them, forming an icosahedron around Perry’s current location, indicating both that the ‘facility’ was BIG, and that it was shaped like a twenty-sided die.

Makes sense if the place is under extreme pressure. It might even be spherical, and the icosahedron is just a result of their placement around the outside.

That made more sense. Equal pressure in every direction was much easier to plan for.

The whole process of Perry mapping the facility with math was complete in about five seconds.

“Whaddya doin?” one of the Distractable Duo asked, frowning at Perry standing up and shifting around the cell.

“Stretching my legs,” Perry said, scratching under the bandages. “Skin’s growing back tight.”

“Sit down, you’re not supposed to be moving around too much.”

“You just don’t wanna play dice with me,” Perry said.

“Yeah, because you don’t have anything to wager.” The other mage scoffed.

“I mean, neither do you guys,” Perry pointed out.

“Nuh-uh, when we’re done here, the Abyssal Marionettes will send our memories back to our originals. We’re betting for real stuff.”

Oh, that’s interesting. They probably shouldn’t have told me that.

When Perry escaped, the knowledge of it would instantly be transferred back to his uncle, which would allow him to plan to intercept Perry and reacquire him.

That meant Perry would have to get…Creative.

It took nearly three months of being experimented on before he was ready, but the result was worth it.

If Perry had fallen into a routine, the same could be said for the mages under Charles. They didn’t watch him as close as they did in the beginning. They had tired eyes, not expecting this particular attempt to extract Abun’zaul to go any differently than the previous thirty.

But they kept it up, because the alternative was death at the hands of a wrathful Marigold.

They didn’t notice him touching the walls on the way by, using his Spendthrift Perk to modify slices of the walls, calculated at precise angles to create the resonance effect he was looking for.

I crammed for this test, Perry thought as they began sealing him into the crystal again. Everybody was where they needed to be. Perry mentally checked off each face in attendance.

Everyone’s here, we can get started.

“Hey, Charles.” Perry said, getting his uncle’s attention.

“What is it?” The puppet with his uncle’s mind asked, scowling. If the Abyssal Marionettes needed sleep, he would have had massive circles under his eyes. The guy’s hair was messy and his fancy suit rumpled. He looked strung out.

The sheer amount of extra gear that had been wheeled in here to carefully poach Perry like an egg was staggering. They’d probably made huge strides in the art of Symbiotic Spirit capture as a consequence of experimenting on him.

“I wanted to talk to you about my kids.”

“If your grandmother makes the right choice and cedes the throne, I see no reason they can’t be spared.” Charles said, stepping closer as the crystal worked its way up his arms.

“Nah, I just wanted to ask you a hypothetical.” Perry said conversationally.

“I don’t have time for this,” Charles said, moving to turn away.

“No, this is important!” Perry said, gaining his uncle’s attention, causing the older man to turn back to him, his brow cocked.

“My hypothetical question is this: Do you think my kids will ever regret not needing to breathe?”

Multi-tool.

PPP.EXE

The tuning fork landed in Perry’s mouth just as emitters on the outside of the facility caught and canceled his spell as usual, but the slices of wall he’d modified caught the signal and bounced it back, changing the wavelength from interrupting to amplifying, striking the crystal spell Perry was being engulfed in.

If it had been completed, the spell wouldn’t have done anything, but it was still being cast, carefully summoned and guided by half a dozen mages. The resonance frequency caught this and boosted creation a hundred thousandfold for a fraction of an instant, wresting control away from the experienced mages and changing a slow growth into an explosion.

Perry and Charles were both trapped in crystal, staring at each other. An expression of blooming horror was frozen in amber on the puppet’s face.

Hahaha.

Now let’s see if he was bluffing, Perry thought.

An instant later, the security system detected that something wasn’t right, and true to his uncle’s word, the solid steel walls around them unzipped, allowing pitch-black water to rush in and crush them.

Credit to the strength of crystal, it wasn’t destroyed by the sudden crushing pressure, which was excellent. That meant the puppets of Charles et al. wouldn’t be instantly destroying, alerting them to his escape.

The problem was, it lacked the buoyancy he was hoping for, sinking straight to the bottom of the ocean.

Which way is up?

In the sudden, pervasive darkness at the bottom of a continental trench, locked in a perfectly sealed crystal, telling up from down was…somewhat difficult.

Light.EXE

(4/5) remaining.

Perry still couldn’t see anything.

He moved the light to his head and discovered he was buried in sand and rent steel. Still no way to tell which way was up.

Hmm..

Perry dismissed the tuning fork, giving himself a bit of room to move his mouth. He scraped up some saliva and allowed it to drip from his tongue…onto the roof of his mouth.

So I’m upside down, trapped in crystal, and buried in sand and debris from the facility. Great.

Perry did some mental math.

A human can withstand 15 PSI before it starts causing damage. The bottom of the Mariana trench is 15750 PSI.

Normal human tolerance multiplied by my Body stat equals 141 PSI. Even if the difference isn’t a simple multiplication, this illustrates how screwed I am.

Especially if Manita has deeper trenches.

Perry was on limited oxygen, so he launched the only plan he had:

Gretchen’s Idyllic Manifestation.EXE

For a brief moment, Perry pictured himself rising back up to the surface at the helm of a magnificent submarine.

He even designed a bit of it before one of the emitters lying in the sand next to him detected the spell and jostled his mental elbow, fouling it up and triggering the spell prematurely.

A mass of twisted black steel manifested above him and crashed down, burying him further.

…so those are still working. Great.

The only reason the emitters didn’t stop the Light spell was because it operated on such a simple concept, and didn’t require any kind of power.

Same with his tool-summoning Perk. It wasn’t magic, it was tech. Technically.

Perry was starting to get a little lightheaded.

Areosolize.

Perry manifested a tiny can of oxygen in his mouth and depressed the trigger with his tongue.

Unfortunately, because he was completely encased in crystal, Perry’s lungs couldn’t expand any further. A tiny bit of air escaped the cannister before the bottle refused to shoot more into the airtight container Perry was in.

This could be a problem.

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