Industrial Strength Magic

Chapter 204: Squid Dildo…Squildo

In a desperate bid, Perry triggered Dragor’s Kinesis.

Dragor’s Kinesis.EXE

(2/3) remaining

HAHAHAHAH!

Relief flooded Perry’s body as the spell locked into place. Whatever or whoever had been feeding him thoughts of self-harm was either crushed under the twisted wreckage of his submarine attempt or otherwise preoccupied.

I’ll take it!

With a mental tug, Perry created a buffer of water around himself and shoved upward, righting his crystal prison at the same time.

Hunks of solid steel the size of houses were flung away as Perry drilled his way up through the wreckage.

They weren’t fucking around, Perry thought to himself as he shoved aside mud, sand and even stone rubble, seemingly rigged to bury the site. He must’ve been buried five hundred feet under…or more.

Finally he came up to a layer of stone debris and pierced through it, bursting through into pitch black water.

Perry killed the light spell.

On Earth alone, there were things in the deep you wouldn’t wanna encounter.

If he truly was on Manita, the deep-sea squids might have mind-powers to back it up.

Best to avoid attention and aim for the surface at full speed.

Which is what he did, cruising through the blackness at what he could only assume were blinding speeds, because the darkness kept him from feeling any kind of motion at all. This kept up for several minutes. until Perry’s vision started crawling with stars from suffocation.

He didn’t know if he’d been going straight up or not, but it must’ve been more up than not, since he didn’t hit the seabed. He didn’t know how deep he was, or what the pressure was, but he DID know that if he didn’t get some air he was going to pass out before he hit the surface, and that would kill him.

Okay, let’s do this.

Multi-tool.

Perry resummoned the tuning fork in his mouth, clenched the tines tight between his teeth, then let them slip.

MMMMMMM

It was only Perry’s supernatural speed that was able to detect the progression of events. First a crack formed in the crystal coating, quickly spiderwebbing across his entire body, followed by blades of water that sheared through the stone and struck his flesh in a move too quick for humans to perceive.

HP:14 ->12

HP: 12->10

Water blades rushed in from every direction trying their best to tear Perry apart as the pressure outside relentlessly forced its way in, exploding the crystal apart.

Once his crystal prison was thoroughly chunked, Perry pushed the weight of the water away with Dragor’s Kinesis, arresting his rapid HP loss.

Never before had he been so glad the spell had no weight limit, but DAMN, the water was cold!

Perry thrashed the broken chunks of magic-transparent crystal away from his arms, then tore the ones away from his head.

Aerosolize.

Perry summoned a bottle of oxygen and depressed the head, pushing the water away from the forming bubble, allowing it to fill the space.

“Oh, dear lord baby Jesus!” Perry sighed in relief, his voice weird and stifled inside the bubble. “That’s so cold!”

Using Dragor’s Kinesis, Perry placed himself at the center of the bubble of air and exerted the megatons of force require to prevent the ocean from crushing it – and him – into nothing.

In the darkness, Perry dripped water from his fingertips onto his palm.

Up is that way.

He’d been about 30 degrees off. Generally moving upward, but taking longer than necessary.

Perry oriented himself and began shooting through the water at the maximum speed he could manage while still maintaining his little bubble-submarine.

The entire ascent was done in silence and darkness. Perry was…generally okay now, but he didn’t want to get into it with the native fauna as icing on the cake.

Ten minutes later, Perry breached the surface without realizing it, startled by the sudden rush of sound as his bubble no longer insulated him from the surroundings.

The howl of wind and rain assaulted his ears, but he still couldn’t see anything.

Perry tightened up a layer of air and used it to insulate himself from the cold rain attempting to steal even more of his body heat.

A dark and stormy night at sea. Great.

The solution was to get above the storm, the way a passenger jet might.

Perry climbed higher, piercing through the clouds, wind and rain, until he was above it all.

Below him, the storm raged on, lit from above by faint starlight.

Above…a nebula visible to the naked eye, seemingly close enough to touch. Perry glanced at the horizon and saw the faintest edge of a moon he’d only seen in picture-books.

In a fit of whimsy, Perry went higher.

Higher.

Even higher, until he had to use Dragor’s Kinesis to manually keep air in.

Then even higher; Until he could make out most of Manita. The dark side he emerged from the water in, and the light side facing towards the sun. He could faintly make out continents and oceans, blue waters and a sliver of green where the land met the morning sun.

Perry spent an inordinate amount of time floating in lower orbit, soaking in the beauty of the dawn on a planet he’d never been to. Enjoying a view that nobody likely ever had.

I should take Natalie and Heather up here and show them…

When Perry’s toe hit one of the oxygen bottles forming a little pile beneath him, he figured it was time to move on. He’d been soaking in the beauty of the dawn, sure, but he’d also been soaking in cosmic background radiation, and the sun was HOT without a buffer.

Gotta find a place to sleep and get Gretchen’s Idyllic Manifestation back.

Gretchen’s Manifestation to set himself up some armor, and a place to retreat to if something wacky happened, then he could work on getting back to Earth.

And maybe a few other things. For spite.

Perry oriented on where he’d first emerged from the water, best as he could figure. He spotted the closest island lit by the stars, and descended to it.

He landed on a sandy beach and collapsed into a heap.

Eighty-six days trapped in a steel box at the very bottom of the ocean, near as he could figure. The sheer relief of sand between his toes, of experiencing something different, brought him to his knees.

Alright, not out of the woods yet, Perry, you got work to do. You need shelter, protection, weapons, fire. Food.

Actually….

Aerosolize.

Perry flopped onto his back and summoned a health-nut food mousse made mostly of whipped egg tofu and vegetables with a bit of salt, mediterranean seasonings and added vitamins.

It wasn’t…great, but Perry didn’t wanna tempt fate by eating nothing but cheese whiz and chocolate for a week. Dietary deficiencies can sneak up on you, and Perry didn’t need to risk his life eating native wildlife that may or may not be lethally poisonous, either.

I have to get up now, don’t I?

With a groan, Perry hauled himself to his feet and shambled towards the treeline.

I don’t suppose a SOS sign on the beach would accomplish much, Perry thought as he approached the nearest tree, knocking on the wood until he found one he liked.

Multi-tool.

A massive logging chainsaw appeared in midair, and Perry seized it with his hands, cutting the tree down in seconds before catching it with Dragor’s kinesis.

PPP.EXE

Perry formed the Pernicious Prison into blades and cut the tree into planks, laying them aside.

I never truly tested the limits of my camping utility. I’m a goddamn swiss army knife, Perry thought, switching to a glue gun and tacking the pieces of wood in place to form the frame of his new cabin as he continued harvesting lumber with Dragor’s Kinesis and the Pernicious Prison.

Normally using wet wood to build would be a big no-no, but Perry was able to dry them out in seconds with the correct application of Spendthrift, encouraging the water to escape quickly while reinforcing the structure of the wood itself to retain its shape.

Hours later, Perry was sitting with his feet up in front of a hearth containing a merrily burning fire in his tiny raw wood cabin, sipping on an aerosolized wine cooler he’d sprayed into a homemade beach-sand glass goblet.

He was technically 21 now, anyway.

Now…what’s the fastest way home? I could travel out to the ruins of the ancient capital and restart the gates…

A thought occurred to Perry. A little magic trick, inspired by Charles’ demonstration.

We’ll call that first one plan B. I’ve got an idea that might work even better.

***Charles’ Abyssal Marionette***

You think my kids will ever regret not needing to breathe?

Charles rolled his eyes for what must’ve been the thousandth time. If the prick had just killed him, his real body would already be on Manita doing damage control, but the Dullard had trapped Charles and every one of the other researchers in Preserving Crystal specifically to avoid news of his escape getting out.

Charles wasn’t even sure how the godsforsaken brat had done it, and that irked him.

But yes, he was regretting not needing to breathe. If not breathing killed his marionette, he’d at least be back on Earth, aware of the problem and fixing it.

The Abyssal marionette was a non-biological construct, which meant it didn’t need to eat, sleep, shit, or breathe. So here he lay, at the bottom of the ocean, sealed in darkness, unable to move, just praying that the crystal would give way and allow him to finally die.

The most irritating thing about the situation was that the crystal was among the most spell-permeable substances known to man. He should be able to cast spells out of it.

However, the material did refract and bend magic that passed through it to some extent, a bit like a lens. The problem here was that the crystal he was coated in was rough, jagged and pebbly, the result of unchecked, explosive growth spreading in every direction.

Every time he tried to slip a spell through it, it was deformed and dissipated without effect.

Paradox, on the other hand, had been trapped in a perfectly faceted piece, designed specifically to allow them to send essences in.

Which meant the brat might still be alive.

Eventually he would get a spell through, crack this crystal prison and die. But every second he failed allowed his quarry to get further away from him.

He’ll probably head for the ruins of the capital. There’s a massive Gate there. If he’s alive, the boy’s best chance of getting back to Earth will be to try and reactivate it.

That would take time. Quite a bit of time. Plenty of time for Charles to figure out how to kill himself through this blasted crystal!

RRRRRRR

A rumbling sound, the groaning of some underwater behemoth washed over him, then passed away, leaving him alone again with his thoughts.

Hours or perhaps days later, the groaning rumble came back, and Charles saw the first light he’d seen in what felt like an age.

Through the jagged, warped crystal, he made out small, blue bioluminescent lights illuminating what appeared to be a tentacle, vast beyond measure as it brushed the dirt away from where he was embedded in the ground.

The tentacle seized a piece of solid steel, several feet thick and long as a boat, plucking it out of the ground like a weed.

Then it disappeared, leaving Charles alone in the oppressive darkness without the ability to move.

Hours, or perhaps days later, it happened again. The creature brushed by, closer this time, plucking bits and bobs of steel out of the ground before disappearing.

Then it came for him.

Charles had the displeasure of seeing a gigantic sucker attach to the front of his crystal prison, faintly lit by the creature’s bioluminescence.

The light winked out for a moment, then Charles found himself face-to-eye with a terror of the deep, it’s mere eye bigger than his entire body.

Yes, crush me, you stupid animal! Charles thought, desperately wishing for the monster to put him in it’s beak and crunch.

This stream of consciousness would rejoin his primary, and he would be able to pick up the chase again.

DO IT!

Unfortunately, the monster had other ideas.

Charles was offered a view of nothing but bioluminescent suckers pressed up against the walls of his crystal prison for what seemed like hours before he felt a scraping that reverberated through the crystal.

A few minutes later, the tentacles retreated, and the massive monster’s eye returned, inspecting him for a moment before moving away.

There’s light above me.I’m close to the surface! Charles thought, his reaction mixed. Now if the crystal broke, it wouldn’t kill him, which was bad.

On the other sand, there was light to see by, which was good. Being trapped, completely unable to move or see in the vast darkness of the abyss was starting to make him…slightly uncomfortable.

As the dawn rose, Charles realized with sudden horror exactly where he’d found himself.

He was attached to a football-stadium sized semicircle of shiny steel and rocks bound together by some kind of hardened mucus in a shallow part of the ocean.

It was a nest.

Not just any nest. A mating display, full of shiny rocks, of which he was one. Through the light-scattering of the rough surface of the Preserving Crystal, he thought he could make out several more of his researchers, each trapped in their own prison.

It wasn’t long before his fears were confirmed, as a second tentacle monster arrived to inspect the nest. Seemingly satisfied, it spread it’s tentacles wide.

Directly on top of him.

The male wasted no time and got to work, and Charles was treated to a sight that would never, EVER fade from his mind.

In their…enthusiasm, several parts of the nest were broken off and flung away violently by the writhing of the megaton behemoths.

Charles was one of them.

One of their tentacles grabbed his crystal for purchase to…stabilize themselves, but his crystal snapped off with a sudden crack.

The squid’s tentacle slipped forward before passionately wrapping around it’s lover instead, unintentionally dragging Charles through the water and flinging him high into the air.

Charles drew an arc through the air before landing in a shallow tidal pool.

That. Was. Awful.

Charles re-evaluated his situation.

He could see the edge of the water, only a few feet above his head. Little crabs and bits of seaweed collected around his ankles.

At least I landed upright.

As the day went by, the tide dropped, completely falling away from his prison, before creeping back in, re-submerging him. If he could open his mouth enough to scream, or move his limbs enough to scratch at his container, he would’ve.

He settled for making quick moaning sounds as he pushed air in and out of his mouth, desperately wishing to get himself out of the water.

There was an endless abyss RIGHT THERE, and one unlucky current of water could see him sent tumbling back to the stygian depths.

The water receded again as the next dawn came. Charles kept trying to slip a spell out of the crystal.

The tide came again, and the fear of dropping back into that endless nothingness prevented him from concentrating.

The cycle repeated again.

He’d been trapped there for three days, when he something trudging down the beach, seemingly hunting crabs and seaweed at low tide.

After three days in the crystal, Charle’s vision had adjusted to the crystal’s distortion. He wished he could say the same for his magic, but magic wasn’t as effortless and built-in to a human’s brain as vision.

He spotted Paradox at about the same time that the brat spotted him.

The Zauberer scion looked pathetic, as usual. His hair was tangled and barbarous, his shirt was tied into some kind of dirty loincloth around his crotch, and his pants were wrapped around his feet.

The Dullard’s ribs were clearly visible, his cheeks sunken, belly emaciated, and sunburn covered a large swath of his back.

Must’ve been under there longer than I thought.

Paradox’s eyes widened. He crept up to the crystal and wiped the sand off, his expression changing when he saw Charle’s face.

Charles saw Paradox’s mouth moving, but he couldn’t hear anything.

I can’t hear anything, you buffoon.

Paradox held up a finger, and returned with a shell, holding it close to Charles’ ear.

“Can you hear me now?” Paradox said, seemingly shouting at the top of his lungs. The sound was tinny, but he could hear him.

“Blink if you can hear me.” Paradox shouted. His gums are bleeding.

Charles blinked. It was painful, trying to force his eyelids under the crystal layered over his eyes, but there was enough wiggle room to do so.

“I’ll get you outta there,” Paradox’s voice came through faintly. “hold on.”

An expression of momentary concentration passed across the Zauberer heir’s face, and a bit of the sand tightened around Charle’s ankles, plucking him out of the sand and carrying him along beside the brat.

Dragor’s kinesis, one of the few spells confirmed to be mastered by the brat, rather than simply regurgitated by his machines. The other being his odd mockery of Threads of Gintax, along with Light and Gretchen’s Idyllic Manifestation.

It was confirmed through the computer’s logs that he’d only tried those four spells during his entire ‘stay’ with them. at this point it was practically confirmed that those were his only spells.

Dragor’s Kinesis is a gem, but as a whole, not exactly an impressive repertoire. Maybe if he wanted to build a prize-winning sand castle.

The boy’s camp showed signs of Gretchen’s Idyllic manifestation, with comfortable sandstone furniture, and a simple hearth, the nearby trees leaning together to form a simple roof above them with seemingly no external modification.

There was a bit of crab boiling in what appeared to be a shallow bowl made of stone.

It was no wonder the soft, pampered prince was starving. He’d never had to fend for himself a day in his life. Marigold had tried her best, but the boy simply had a civilian mindset.

Sooner or later he would start to become desperate for someone to talk to, and eventually, he would release Charles from some misguided notion that their shared stranding had created some kind of bond.

It didn’t take long. After two days of eyeroll-inducing, one-sided conversation, Paradox got desperate enough for companionship.

“Hey, if I got that stuff off your head, would you talk back to me? maybe we could figure out a way to get home together?”

Charles blinked once for ‘yes’.

“Okay, let’s do this,” Paradox said, hefting a sharp stone and began carefully chipping away at the crystal.

As soon as the fresh air hit Charles’ face, he gave the trusting idiot a winning smile.

“See you soon!”

He summoned a gallon of Menzel’s Silver Flesh Stripper directly above his head and welcomed the sweet release of death.

***Back on Earth***

Charles sprung out of bed.

“Shit, shit shit!” He muttered, donning his clothes as quickly as possible. He assumed that the Zauberer brat had been a tough nut to crack, not that he’d nonlethally subdued all of Charles’ compatriots’ marionettes simultaneously and buried them at the bottom of the ocean.

He knew exactly where the boy was, too. The little stretch of land just off the main island they’d been using as a staging ground for the construction of the extraction chamber.

Charles used to vacation there as a child, given that it was relatively monster-free.

The extractor was destroyed, and any hope of prying Abun’zaul was likely destroyed with it, but he could NOT allow the boy to return to civilization and implicate Charles in his kidnapping.

Marigold had killed for much less.

Charles donned his protective cloak, layered defensive spells over his mind.

-Winced at the memory of giant squids fucking-

Then proceeded to layer defensive spells across his body as he snatched out his cell phone and rounded up all his compatriots and instructed them to meet him at the Frepon Family portal.

It was a hidden clearing out in the wilderness, with layers of obfuscation magic preventing anyone without the proper key from discovering it. for all intents and purposes, the land the gate lay on didn’t exist to the outside world.

Charles met his vassals in front of the Gate.

“The Zauberer has escaped.” He said, quietly, as if Marigold could hear him say it. For all he knew, she may be able to.

A hushed murmur ran through the assembled mages.

“We’re going to terminate this attempt, and once it’s done, I will erase the memory of it from your minds, for all our sakes. This has to stay a secret, or we all die.”

They nodded silently.

“Alright,” Charles said, reaching for the gate. “Let’s-“…He hesitated.

What if it’s a trick? He thought.

He didn’t think the Zauberer was capable of it, but the boy had already tricked him once, hadn’t he? Pretended to be helpless…waited until they were all gathered together and…

Charles’ fingers pulled away from the gate like it was a hot stove.

Fool me twice, shame on me, he thought, reaching down to the magical pedestal that housed the delicate magics required to engage and maintain the portal.

He tweaked the settings to summon the portal a quarter-mile away from its previous home in the center of the main island, and five hundred feet in the air.

No ambush for you, brat, he thought, flicking the Gate on.

“We’ll be inserting from the sky,” he said, glancing back at his vassals as the Gate opened. “Take to the air.”

His vassal’s feet left the ground just as his own did, and they flew through the Gate, their robes fluttering in the wind.

The sudden transition from night to day caused Charles to squint for a moment as his eyes adjusted to the sudden light.

He spotted the main island.

A monolithic construction of ominous black dominated the island, jutting out of the earth and stretching out to meet the ocean, where it seemed to draw nutrients like a living thing. If he’d stepped through the Gate inside that thing-

It’s been a WEEK!

“Back through the Gate. NOW!” Charles shouted, turning to –

His vassals had been replaced with light-eating black suits of armor, floating in the air between himself and the swirling portal hanging in midair.

“Hello Charles,” A deeply modulated voice spoke in his ear as cold fingers tightened around his neck. “Did you enjoy being a squid’s dildo?”

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