Copy Protection Void Part 15

Mist would have felt worse about hitting the unsuspecting man in the back of the head with a hammer if it wasn't for the swirling cloud of gray surrounding the old man's head. He brought the hammer down on the back of Pedron Niall's head a second time, making damned sure the asshole was dead then stepped out of the gateway that Egwene had opened.

"Do you hate the whitecloaks that much or are you just blowing off steam from putting up with Calle playing with your breasts in front of people?" Egwene asked as a peach leather shoulder bag appeared out of thin air next to the corpse, a touch surprised that Mist hadn't even hesitated before killing the old man.

"Calle was fine," Mist assured her as he checked the shoulder bag with his glasses. 'Human skin bag, twenty slots? I'm going to have to see if the crafters can duplicate this with something less creepy.'

"Just fine?" Egwene asked as she walked through the gateway and let it close behind her.

"She had just the right amount of professionalism and enthusiasm to keep the entire experience from being a nightmare." He scowled as he thought about the crap the whitecloaks had pulled off in the series and their 'redemption' arc in the last book that had felt hollow. "I'm just angry that no one else is willing to execute the bastards for murdering innocent people and being a blight on the world."

"It's hard to say most of them don't deserve it," Egwene admitted. "What's with the bag?"

"It's larger on the inside and has twenty slots or compartments that hold an item without increasing the weight of the bag or the bulk," Mist explained as he put the bag's strap over his shoulder and checked his clothing options. 'Upgrade one type of clothing you can conjure to include an always clean quality?'

"Would bags count as one item or multiple?" Egwene asked thoughtfully.

"They should count as one," Mist replied as he used the upgrade to upgrade his ability to conjure magical loincloths. He checked his gift menu and stared at the descriptions for the three stamps that he'd just been given. "Why does the horrible shit have to be useful?"

"If it wasn't useful, we could just ignore it," Egwene replied. "What did you get?"

Mist sighed. "A stamp that gives the person stamped the ability to shape wood but you become allergic to bacon, a stamp that gives you flight and could drive you insane and a stamp that gives you the ability to slip into a shadow realm at the cost of your skin, your shadow and your reflection, it also makes you allergic to garlic."

Egwene winced. "Do you lose your skin every time you use the ability or just when you get the stamp?"

Mist double checked the description. "Just the first time, we might be able to fix it with regeneration or with the bunny ears but I'm not sure how we'd fix the reflection bit."

"That's probably worth testing on a darkfriend," Egwene admitted. "What exactly does the stamp that gives you flight do?"

"It permanently gives the victim the ability to see magic and fly without wings if they leave it on until it fades in a week. Unfortunately, the mark will permanently lower their reservations against eating human flesh and drastically increase their hunger and strength until the ink fades."

"That's almost worth it," Egwene admitted, thinking about the times she'd flown in the world of dreams. "Especially if we bind them with the Oath Rod so they won't eat people and use the Dragon Crown to spread the magic around."

"Almost," Mist agreed as he put the sledge hammer he'd borrowed from the smith into his bag. "We'd just have to keep them from actually eating anyone so they don't transform."

"Transform?" Egwene asked warily.

"Anyone that actually eats human flesh while they have the flight stamp on them will transform into a ravenous beast that has an unending hunger, immunity to cold, the ability to eat just about anything without getting full and the strength to rip a trolloc in half with their bare hands. It gets worse if they're a channeler and they eat someone with magic."

"How does it get worse?" Egwene asked warily as Mist looted the commander's sword, sheath and coin purse.

"They'll increase their potential strength with the power and pick up a talent for weather manipulation or increase their talent if they already have it and lose any restraint they might have had before getting transformed," Mist explained as he drew the commander's power wrought blade, testing the weight.

"Do you think lab coats would fix the corruption?" Egwene asked, wondering if they could reverse the changes or at least mitigate the negatives because increasing her power would be worth jumping through some hoops if it didn't leave them insane.

"I don't know," Mist replied as the door opened, revealing a man with a large nose that had a gray fog around his head.

Egwene bound the man's hands with ropes of magic.

"Traitor!" Mist shouted as he lunged forward and stabbed the whitecloak in the neck before the man could process what he was seeing. He pulled his new sword out of the man's throat then lunged for the next whitecloak.

Egwene used her mana to weave a disguise over herself, making herself look like a somewhat short questioner, complete with the shepherd's crook on her illusionary armor then followed Mist into the hallway. 'At least this should confuse things for the people we can save.'

0o0o0

"Shit!" Mist cursed when he spotted another group of young men coming down the hallway that didn't have fog around their heads. "Order sixty six!" he shouted as he tossed one of the daggers he'd picked up and hit one of the questioners in the throat that had a dark red mist around his head.

"Stop them!" one of the inquisitors that he'd been fighting shouted.

Mist tossed the other dagger he'd picked up at one of the inquisitors then turned and sprinted for the door of one of the training areas, doing his best to avoid hurting people that might actually be somewhat innocent.

Egwene followed Mist into the training room then slammed the door shut and wedged a dagger into the door frame. She quickly used mana to open a gateway to the vault against the wall and jumped through.

Mist followed Egwene through the gateway and stabbed the man with black fog around his head who was sorting through a box of gems and hadn't noticed them.

Egwene closed the gateway then used magic to light some of the torches on the walls, revealing hundreds of bags of coins and boxes of stolen goods that they'd collected over the years. "Do you think we killed the worst of them?"

"I don't know if we killed the worst but we probably managed to kill the most competent, Niall and both of his spymasters are dead and we managed to frame Asunawa for killing them before we cut his head off which should help drive a wedge between the two factions," Mist said as he carefully wiped his blade off on the dead man's white cloak.

"A couple of hundred cultists and darkfriends doesn't seem like enough," Egwene admitted, wishing she could destroy the entire organization.

Mist put his new blade in the sheath on his belt. "Killing Niall and Asunawa in a way that everyone can blame on the crown or internal fighting is a good step, copying their spymaster so we can rip their intelligence networks apart or steal them while they try to reorganize is another good step, same with looting the vault so they can't afford to pay everyone."

"This isn't going to stop them," Egwene complained as she used her mana to open a large gateway against the wall that opened to an area near the Manetheren waygate.

Mist grabbed one of the boxes of gems and stuck it in his bag, filling up his last slot. "No but it's going to keep them from causing trouble while they sort things out and it removes Niall from the board, he was annoyingly competent and had the morals of a snake."

"How long do you think it will take before they start a war to recover their losses?" Egwene asked as she used mana to shove all of the bags and boxes of gold on the ground through the gateway.

"I don't know, they should need at least a week to elect another lord commander and high inquisitor and there's nothing stopping us from coming back and killing their replacements if they're cultists or darkfriends."

"What happens if they end up with someone halfway reasonable?" Egwene asked as she started levitating all of the boxes and bags that were on the tables through the gateway.

"Then we start working on killing the worst of the Seanchan nobles and stealing their channelers while the whitecloaks try to reorganize, I'm sure Mat has a list," Mist replied as he opened his clothing menu and checked his new options.

"Probably," Egwene agreed and focused on making sure she didn't break the various valuables she was looting.

'Nice, more upgrades for the stuff I can conjure,' Mist mused as he assigned the always clean, waterproof and fireproof upgrades to his cloak, ghoulish jacket and halter top options. 'That should give everyone basic gear that won't get wet and won't catch fire.'

Mist scowled when he noticed the warning on the knee high silk stockings that increased a person's stamina regeneration. 'A female wearing these cursed stockings acts like a beacon to any rapists and darkfriends within ten miles, causing them to become obsessed with the girl wearing the stockings to the point where they'll steal a horse to travel to the girl's location so they can claim her for themselves. That's one way to ruin a perfectly good stamina boosting item and a good way to deal with darkfriends, especially if you have a bunch of girls that are just about immune to physical damage.'

"Someone needs to get stabbed," Mist grumbled as he read the description of the cursed belt he could conjure, feeling a bit green as he thought about someone using the cursed belt.

"What's wrong?" Egwene asked as she sent the last couple of boxes through the gateway.

"I picked up the ability to conjure a cursed belt that will give the first girl that puts it on the ability to conjure magical watermelons that won't start rotting unless they're cut or broken open," Mist explained as he walked through the gateway.

"What's wrong with that?" Egwene asked as she followed Mist through the gateway and let it close behind her.

Mist glanced between the stunted trees that were scattered around the valley that used to contain Manetheren then turned and focused on Egwene. "It also causes the victim's breasts to quickly enlarge to the point where they explode, spraying the area with thousands of magical seeds that can be eaten to increase a person's lifespan by a year per seed or planted to grow magical fruit trees."

"Ashes," Egwene cursed, her mind conjuring horrible images she could have done without. "Would regeneration even fix that?"

"No clue," Mist admitted. "It might keep people from dying or it could make things worse."

"What makes the trees magical?" Egwene asked, wondering if they were useful enough to justify using the belt on some of the black ajah.

"You can grow an entire harvest in a couple of minutes if you feed them enough mana and the fruit won't rot for a year," Mist explained.

"Twisted and useful and not really something we can afford to ignore considering the food shortages in the future," Egwene admitted.

"That about covers it," Mist agreed as he swapped to his gift page.

"Do you think we could talk some of the black ajah into risking it if we promised them another fifty years?" Egwene asked, figuring they'd do just about anything to live longer.

"Probably, most of them aren't exactly sane and they might get a couple of hundred years out of it since channelers live longer," Mist suggested. He scowled when he read the description of the first new gift. "Great, more shit I don't want to use…" he trailed off as he realized that he might actually have a use for the twisted collar.

"More crap?" Egwene asked.

"Unless it lets us avoid going insane," Mist replied as he pulled the collar out of his gift menu and looked at it with his glasses. "Putting it on basically traps your mind inside of the gem and imprints your body with the personality of a bubbly whore with your skills."

"That's horrifying," Egwene complained.

"It's certainly not my cup of tea but you have to willingly put the collar on and you're pulled back into your body when someone takes the collar off," Mist explained.

"That's slightly less horrifying," Egwene admitted, thinking about the a'dam that she'd been forced to wear in the other timeline.

Mist put the suspect collar in his belt pouch. "And it might be the only way we'll be able to use the twisted stamp without getting turned into a monster."

"I think your gifts are getting worse," Egwene complained.

"To be fair, most of the skill crystals are probably fine," Mist replied as he skimmed over two dozen basic weapons and skill crystals he'd been given. "Ooh, a ring that lets you train your balance to supernatural levels with a couple of hours of work for the low cost of occasionally blowing up your left foot."

Egwene shook her head. "Bode's right, you get sarcastic when you're annoyed."

"I was hoping for something that doesn't make my skin crawl…" Mist trailed off as he read the description of a token. "Min-Maxer's Crystal Weapon of Slaughter? Using this token on a weapon transforms the weapon to crystal, drops the weapon's accuracy to terrible, adds twenty percent to the chance to get a critical hit and improves the weapon's speed by two categories. You also have a twenty four hour window to make the weapon cause more damage at the cost of durability every time you kill an intelligent being with it."

"So, the weapon gets harder to control and more dangerous the more creatures you kill?" Egwene asked, wanting to make sure she understood his explanation.

"Technically it just drops the weapon's accuracy once but yeah basically," Mist agreed as he continued skinning over the basic skill crystals he'd been given. "I should be able to use my other token to get the best of both worlds."

"What type of weapon are you thinking of using?" Egwene asked as she started sorting through the boxes, trying to figure out if there was anything they had to worry about getting damp.

"I'm torn between upgrading a wand and making a training sword because the other token boosts the rate we gain skill…" Mist trailed off as he noticed another token in his gift menu. "Corrupted Weapon Token, using this token on a weapon will bestow a great and terrible curse on the weapon, giving you untold power at a price few would want to pay. That sounds a bit ominous."

"That sounds like a good way to end up dead or worse," Egwene warned him, thinking about Mat's dagger.

"If I'm not touching the weapon when I use the token, I can probably avoid the curse and my mental defense gift should keep me from getting compelled to grab it," Mist pointed out.

"What are you going to do if you create something worse than Mat's dagger?" Egwene asked warily, fairly sure that his talent was trying to screw him over.

"I'm going to have you hit it with balefire or drop it in a skimming portal and let it float in the void for eternity if you can't destroy it," Mist told her. "Most curses have an escape clause or ways to mitigate the negatives, the jackets that eat tainted magic might be able to eat the curse or at least keep me from getting corrupted while I toss the weapon if we can't use it."

"It seems like a stupid risk," Egwene argued.

"Says the girl that can use balefire if she runs into greater darkhounds or the forsaken, I got stupidly lucky when I killed Aginor and Balthamel and they'll be back eventually looking for revenge. If I don't find a spell or make a weapon, they're going to kill me or they'll do something worse like drag me to the pit of doom where the Dark One can torture me until I break," Mist argued.

Egwene sighed when she realized that Mist had a point. "If you want to have a clone use the token on a weapon, I'll help you destroy the weapon if something goes wrong."

"Thank you, I appreciate it. I'm trying to limit the collateral damage," Mist told her, feeling a bit better about his crazy plan.

"I'm just trying to be the voice of reason," Egwene replied as she pulled one of the paintings out of a crate and looked at it.

Mist scowled when he saw the painting of a family with three young children hanging from a tree while a group of whitecloaks watched. "And I'm reminded why I don't feel bad about killing whitecloaks."

Egwene scowled at the painting. "I'm torn between burning it and showing it to some of the nobles and reminding them why the whitecloaks need to be destroyed."

"We can always burn the shit after we show it to the nobles and it would give us a good idea of which nobles support the whitecloaks," Mist suggested as he cast his spell to conjure a questionable wand, creating a slime covered tentacle with an eyeball in the tip.

"Is that a wand?" Egwene asked as she studied the section of blue tentacle that was slowly moving.

"Yeah," Mist replied as he checked the wand's stats. "It can shoot acidic slime about five feet and the accuracy sucks because it wiggles."

"How dangerous is the acid?" Egwene asked.

Mist carefully set the wand on the ground and wiped his hands on the weathered stone, trying to get some of the slime off. "The slime on the wand is generally harmless, the stuff you can shoot might give you a rash after about twenty minutes if you don't wash it off but I wouldn't bet on it."

Egwene watched the magic as it flowed out of Mist's hands and solidified into a dark wooden wand that was carved with a spiral shape. "And that one?"

"It shoots fire, it's probably good for lighting a stove," Mist replied as he placed the wooden wand next to the slime covered wand and conjured another wand. "Oh, this one tosses apple sized balls of water which might be fun since they can't actually hurt anyone."

Egwene glanced up at the sky, figuring they had a couple more hours of daylight left. "This is going to take a while, isn't it?"

"Probably," Mist agreed as he conjured a spatula shaped wand. 'Shoots hot grease? Terrible stats and no style points, I'm not a blue mage.'

"Let me know when you run out of mana or when you get bored, I'm going to work on getting a mental map of the area so I know where to build the school," Egwene told Mist.

"I'll let you know," Mist replied as he conjured a bone white wand that could shoot electricity at people, as long as they were within five feet and wearing a decent amount of metal. 'This could take a while.'

0o0o0