8 May 2021 - Day 1
I grabbed two blocks of cast iron off the floor and shaped them into a rough suit of armor for my chest, neck, and back, and then shaped the big stone into gauntlets. The hit to my energy stole my breath for a second there. I grit my teeth, anticipating another hit to my energy tank, grabbing three more cast iron blocks and quickly shaping them into a tower shield just a bit smaller than the doorway. Sandra began to float behind me as blue light shone from within her. With one arm holding most of the tower shield’s weight, I held my tomahawk in the other while still bracing the shield with my closed fist. The high-pitched snarling reached new heights as other distinctive growls joined in.
“On three, move!” I commanded. “One, two, three!” Mike and Isabella jumped out of the way as the door swung open. I couldn’t see what I caught on my shield as I rushed forward like a bulldozer but it wasn’t light. Using Terrastria, I forced the outer face of the shield to grow slender blades that tore and impaled the animals screaming for our blood. Purposely channeling my super strength even more, I let go of the shield for a second, stepped back and gave it a solid front kick that sent it and the impaled possums flying. The battering ram of a tower shield smashed through the railing of my front porch as I hurled the tomahawk at the furthest bleeding rodent. Not wasting time, I jumped on the first one that slipped free. My stone gauntlets grew spikes as I powered fist after fist into its ugly face.
“Grant, look out!” Sandra yelled, bolting out the door and grabbing a possum in mid-flight with glowing blue telekinetic hands. I grabbed the one I was tangoing with by its now toothless mouth and slammed it down onto one of the broken railing columns that now functioned as an impromptu spike. Sandra slammed the second body down on top of the first to form a possum kebab as I focused on the last one that had my axe sticking out of its body.
“You missed!” Sandra commented as the last frothing animal scrambled towards me on three good legs.
“With the blade, yes.” The axe had been thrown so hard that even though I didn’t hit it with the sharp blade, the handle had slammed into the shoulder and was sticking out of its back. The ugly beast limped forward with an awkward gait.
My gauntlets flowed off my hands to form a crude spear just in time for me to pin it to the lawn. Figuring I might as well get some practice out of this, I took command of the lawn, pushing out with my magic to bring the dirt to life. Earthen hands tipped with stone claws sprung up, grabbing and tearing at every available handhold on the possum, pulling it to pieces bit by bit until it perished. That fight really took it out of me. Sweat ran down my face and back and my breathing was fast and uneven.
I heard vomiting behind me. “Was that really necessary?” Isabella asked as she hid behind Mike.
“Was it necessary for you to come over here?” I wheezed, a bit piqued at her tone. “Shit, both of you have powers now too! And I’m pretty sure saving your butts warrants a ‘thank you’ instead of an examination of how we killed your pest problem.”
“That’s not what she meant,” Mike said, cutting in with a glare. “That was just really gruesome . . . and very bloody.”
“Oh shut up.” I cursed, looking up and forcing myself to take deep even breaths. “Just keep a look out in case more hungry creatures come around.
Sandra pulled the dead possums off my broken porch railing with her mind and threw them in the lawn. Retrieving my tomahawk and stone axe, I cleaned them both off and shaped the stone into gauntlets. Taking a deep breath, I picked up the tower shield and molded it into a cuirass again with big shoulder pads and a neck guard. “What are you doing now?” Sandra asked, floating a bit into the yard to be closer to me.
“Well, we have a bunch of fertilizer,” I said, gesturing to the bodies as the yard swallowed them up. “And I think we have just the right plant to put here.” Walking over to the side of the house near the AC unit, I hacked off a sizable cutting of a rose bush that simply wouldn’t die. We tried killing that thing by trimming it down to a stump and then putting a stump killer on it but even after years of doing that it didn’t work. With a bow and a smirk, I planted the cutting in the pile of disturbed soil and gestured at my wife.
“And you want me to . . . what?” Sandra asked. Her glowing blue eyes and floating visage was awesome in a scary yet hot kind of way.
“Well, you made one vine grow, work your plant magic on this bad boy. And when we have invaders, you can control this to be a badass, thorny, living weapon.” I couldn’t help but grin at my mad inspiration. “Instead of being ‘Poison Ivy’, I was thinking . . . ‘Thorny Vine’ or ‘Horny Vine’!” I chortled. “Just kidding, how about ‘Bloody Rose’ or ‘Madam Thorn’?”
Her glare was all I needed to see. “Ok then,” I said, “Moving on. No code names for Misses Grump.” I felt a telekinetic pinch. “Ow! None of that!”
“Seriously!” Mike jumped in. “Now is not the time to joke! Those were flipping possums! Scavengers! What are we going to do if a pack of dogs or cats comes by? Actual predators instead of scavengers?”
“I don’t understand how you can joke at a time like this!” Isabella scolded from the porch, her glare flitting back and forth between me and my wife. “If we die our children die!”
“Then maybe you shouldn’t piss off the possums. Don’t ridicule the rodents! Don’t patronize the pests!” I couldn’t help it. Dark humor is a part of my family. I did put my hands up as Mike balled his fists at his side. “Ok, all right, just trying to make the best of a bad situation.”
“Which means we should stick together.” Sandra settled down in the lawn her inner blue glow stopped. “There’s safety in numbers and we have an array of powers that can keep us alive, right honey?” She said, looking right at me.
“I mean, I guess?” I said, molding a bit of cast iron in my hand like clay. “I can probably make them some armor that would help everyone alive. I’m going to have to scavenge to get it. Might take a while.”
“How can you make armor?” Mike asked, squinting as the sun came out from behind a cloud.
“Alchemy, one of my abilities,” I answered. “I need raw supplies and I can sort of shape them into what I need. Like, I can probably turn cars into a bunch of different products. Even the tires can be shock absorbers for us.”
Mike grimaced. “I still haven’t figured out how to use my own powers.” His wife hugged his arm.
“We’ll figure them out together.” Isabella said, trying to comfort him.
“So is that a yes?” Sandra asked, her hands on her hips. She meant business now. “Are we teaming up or what?”
“I’m down for it,” I said. “I think we need to figure out what house we’re going to claim as a base and then start scavenging the entire neighborhood. Our house has a bit more room than y’alls so I say the both of you should come over. Pretty much bring all of the food, everything you can carry, bring it all over and pile in the basement and the attic.” I turned to Sandra. “Babe, you go with them as your mind powers can do heavy lifting. It’ll be a good exercise for you to get used to using your powers. And Mike,” I looked at him. “Try and see if you can get your own stuff to work. You had ‘Mental Hands’ and ‘A Father’s Strength’ right?”
He nodded.
“Right, one of those is probably more strength than you used to have and the other might be your mind being able to hold things too. Can you show me your status? Just put your hand on my shoulder and say ‘show status’.”
Mike did as I suggested, standing next to me. “Show status.”
“Right, see, look there.” I pointed at his traits. “I think they’re generally a one for one relation to your abilities. Your ‘Shatterpoint’ ability definitely makes sense if it’s related to ‘Discerning Eye’. And if that’s true, then ‘Mind Over Matter’ says you can have ‘invisible hands to help your own’.”
“And with a Strength score of 3, that means I should be three times stronger than normal right?” He asked, his voice clearly unsure. “Is that how that works?”
“Who knows man?” I said, feeling more of my energy return as I stood in the dirt. “Hey, try this for more info. Say ‘Show characteristic status!”
Mike repeated after me, giving a quiet ‘whoa’ before showing me his sheet.
I took a moment to scan it. “Theoretically.” Sandra groaned at my answer from where she was floating away. “THEORETICALLY!” I repeated louder just to annoy her a bit. “Yes, that’s my hypothesis that you’ll be able to prove. So, if y’all can move everything useful over, we can make this our first base of operations while I make us some weapons and armor.”
Everybody set off to their own tasks as I grabbed a bunch of cast iron blocks and hauled them out to my backyard, depositing them in front of my shed. I cursed as I saw the back of my fence that formed the rear corner of the chicken pen was smashed out. A freaking four foot hole sat there and my chicken coop itself didn’t have a roof. I looked around just to make sure I wasn’t missing some hidden predator gunning for me. A standard six foot tall fence that’s about an inch thick pine is clearly no longer going to cut it in terms of keeping the new age animals out. I opened the gate to the chicken pen and checked the coop, no hens.
“Damnit!”
A rustle off to my right startled me. I dropped into a fighting crouch, my stone gauntlets forming spikes as I readied my tomahawk. A cross between a velociraptor and a molting chicken stared at me from the alleyway where telephone lines were placed. Standing at three feet tall with a mouth full of razor sharp teeth, its stubby wings flapped a bit showing off its new claws at the forward wing joint. Two snorts followed as two more of the mutated dinosaurs stepped out. Each one of them had a brightly colored strip of flesh on their left legs, exactly where I had put cheap plastic bracelets on my chickens. Farmers use them to tell their hens apart.
“Oh shit . . . you girls are the fence wreckers,” I cursed softly, my gauntlet spikes growing longer as the small dinosaurs hissed. “My own chickens. My gals!”
“Of course,” I kept muttering, slowly taking steps back. “We have mutated dogs, giant possums, and possibly huge feral cats, why not have dinosaurs too? Hmmm? This just keeps getting better.” Then as one, all three feathery raptors hissed, turned, and sprinted away out of the hole in the fence into the alleyway. “Thank God for small favors.”
This meant armor had to wait, at least for an hour. I kept my vigil for five minutes, listening for any kind of threat. After I was satisfied that I wasn’t in immediate danger, I scoped out the problem. Standing in the hole of my fence, I pushed my will into the dirt, pulling and shaping the soil as it rose to fill in the gap. It was not a quick process but in less than ten minutes I had filled in the hole with dirt and had turned that section of crumbly wall into solid stone.
I groaned as I looked around. “Crap. Now just gotta do the whole fence.”
Two hours of intense magical concentration only broken by two water breaks and two more food breaks got it done. The main thing slowing me down was that I stopped every other minute to look around. I don't think paranoia is a strong enough word after seeing all the upgrades animals were getting. I kept imagining hawks as big as biplanes swooping down to get me and squirrels with laser vision. Nothing was off the table in my mind. But with one eye constantly on my surroundings, I managed a steady pace.
The wooden fence served as a structural guide for the initial dirt shaping but then became obsolete when I used my magic to turn the dirt into five inch thick stone. As another layer of protection, I shaped the top of the wall so that it had wicked spikes and then I also made sure to extend the base of the stone fence four feet below the surface of the earth. As a safety measure, I used my magic to force the outer facing layer of stone to be smoother than glass so nothing could get an easy grip to hop over the fence. I played with my magic as I worked, testing my limits to find the extent of my control. I learned that if I went slow and steady, the dirt seemed to flow faster. Working faster only tired me out quicker, as if I were working against the very nature of the Earth.
Keeping some part of my body connected to the Earth turned out to be absolutely key. I noticed that if I kept my bare hand on the stone wall or if I was sitting down and my hand was on the dirt, I refilled my stores of power considerably faster.
“Slow is smooth, smooth is fast.” I muttered, forcing myself to maintain a steady pace, one that allowed me to keep going with minimal strain. Just doing this task showed me that there was an art to this. It wasn’t just a matter of power, but of focus and will and technique. The more I visualized what I was doing, the more I could see it, the more efficient the entire process became.
Taking a ten minute break after finishing the sturdy stone wall, I felt safe enough and recharged enough to start the job I actually wanted to do. I pulled up a giant mound of dirt in the center of the yard and shaped it into a large four foot square. After turning that into stone, I shaped an outline for the ritual circle. “Ritual surface, check. Ritual circle, check. Materials, need some mo’.”
By my guesstimation, it was probably after one in the afternoon and my stomach was rumbling again. I went back inside the house and grabbed some leftovers, wolfing them down as fast as I could while thinking about actually making the armor. I talked as I rolled my thoughts over in my mind. “Armor for Mike will actually be a fun process as he’s got super strength, which means I can make it heavy or super durable. Sandra doesn’t really need much thanks to her powers but Isabella might also not need it. One of her abilities is a kind of armor, I think. I’ll probably end up making her something light, like a backup set of leather armor.”
I pulled out my trusty notebook and jotted down a few more thoughts and outlines for experiments. “More testing, really need to figure this shit out more first.” I grabbed a couple shoddy pieces of plywood from the shed, a few blocks of oak wood, some cast iron rods, and then a couple lengths of twine and lengths of chicken wire. Looking down at the messy pile on the ritual circle, I decided to get one more thing. Two minutes later, I placed a spare tire that I ‘acquired’ from a neighbor’s Jeep directly on top of the pile.
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Picturing in my mind exactly what I wanted, I flooded the circle with energy, making sure to fill up the boundary and then enough to flood the interior space. A bright light disintegrated everything as I closed my eyes and focused on every detail. I had to picture my goal. Every bit of what I wanted had to be perfectly mapped out in my mind in order to make this process function as smoothly as possible. The light slowly vanished as a beautiful medieval shield molded itself out of the provided elements while the unused portions of material lay scattered around the interior of the boundary.
“Oh hell yes!” I yelled, picking up the magnificently embossed multi-layered shield. We humans have been inherently limited in what we can carry based on the strength and stamina of our bodies, but with super strength, that avenue opened up way more options. My latest project was, in essence, a shield with bonded layers that had the grain of those layers facing in opposing directions. To top it off, the entire piece was bonded together with iron, steel, and more than enough Alchemy.
I picked it up, examining it closely. The inner sheet of material was composed of one layer of oak wood with the grain going vertical while the bonded layer on top of that was also wood but with the grain rotated ninety degrees. But since Alchemy allows me to skip all the naughty bits of carpentry and blacksmithing, I took it several steps further. The edge of the shield was coated in a layer of cast iron that would allow Mike to bash or punch with the shield. The rubber from the tire went into forming a layer of impact insulation. Using Alchemy, I shaped the rubber and steel wire into braided wires with a cushioned grip to form the back, the straps and the brace. Part of that bracing structure and straps came from the reformed metal from the tire’s rim.
The outer portion of the ritual next to where the shield originally lay had the extraneous materials, the leftover wood, nylon from the tire frame, and small blocks of steel and cast iron. Picking the shield up, I put it on my arm and gave it a good swing. To me, it was as light as swinging a thin metal trash can lid. Looking down, I decided to fix my oversight. In my eagerness, I made an upgraded shield from what I’d seen on the History channel and that awesome show Vikings. What I hadn’t done in my consideration of super strength was to actually coat the front in a layer of combined steel and cast iron. There was also another weakness, too much carbon in the cast iron which if mixed with steel would result with brittle steel, which means I need to remove some carbon.
Eager to try again, I placed the shield back down, picked up the extra materials from the side of the ritual and placed them on top of the shield in the middle. Another attempt got me much closer to the results I wanted. The front of the shield flared with light, suddenly covered in a half-inch thick layer of steel mixed with cast iron that had a lot less carbon. I figured that most of the removal of carbon from the cast-iron would allow for a less brittle product, and the Alchemy allows me to skip the laborious process of melting everything down and combining it just right. But what I found is that the less I knew of the process, the more energy Alchemy required to complete the project, which meant I got back way less energy than when I started.
“Shoulda paid way more attention in high school chemistry!” I complained, picking up the completed shield that glimmered in the early afternoon sun. At this point I actually felt bone tired.
“This looks new.” Sandra, Isabella, and Mike stood on the back porch, surveying the extensive changes to the landscape.
“Crap! You scared me. When did y’all get out here?” My wife shrugged, shaking her head. I squinted at them, trying to figure out exactly when they walked out onto the back porch. “Well, this is a present for you, Mike,” I said proudly, pointing at the shield. The dull black pseudo-steel rim of the shield contrasted nicely with the oak wood body of the shield. I was proud of my first real craftsmanship.
“And all of this?” Sandra questioned, gesturing at the spiked stone wall that replaced our normal wooden fence.
“Well, that’s because our chickens turned into raptors.” I deadpanned. All three of them looked at me, their jaws bouncing off the floor. No words came out of their flapping lips so I took a deep breath and just continued on. “Our leghorn egg layers mutated, got angry, and made a big hole in the fence and since prehistoric raptors have now returned to reality and you two got driven out of the house by giant possums, I figured that an upgrade to the fence was in order. And that took me two hours and here I am just now finishing up the first bit of Alchemy.”
I walked up the stairs to the deck and handed Mike the shield. “Happy fucking early birthday, or belated birthday, not sure when yours is. But here you go.”
“So who’s getting the armor first?” Sandra asked, still looking everything over.
“Well you’re my wife so I’d think of you first-” She gave me a big smile. “But you kinda have your own armor built in so practically, you should be last.” That smile turned into a frown and all I could do was shrug.
I turned to Isabella. “Mike has a shield which is a great start but you haven’t figured out your powers at all and I frankly still need to look over your status to see what kind of armor would fit you best.” She exchanged furtive looks with her husband, both looking as uncertain and wary as I did. I just didn’t let it show. I can push useless emotions to the back of my mind if I have a project to distract me.
Clearing my throat, I pointed at the shield in Mike’s arms. “I think the best course of action is to get Mike fully set up in a suit of armor so he can be a freaking steel tank. Sandra will protect Isabella until then, and then I’ll get her all armored up so she can learn to use her powers.” I turned to my wife. “After that, I’ll get you taken care of babe.”
Sandra grunted, not liking it but agreeing with my train of logic. “So how does your Alchemy work exactly?” She asked.
I grinned. “Theoretically-” Sandra groaned but I ignored that with a righteous sniff. “Theoretically . . . I need all the base materials required to make armor, and I can adjust, fix, mend, resize, and do all that good stuff pretty quickly as long as I have that.” I grabbed my water bottle and slugged it. I tried to hide my exhaustion but I must have given it away as I sagged into my chair. Sandra came over and stood next to me, putting her hand on my shoulder so that I couldn’t get up. “I’m going to need Isabella here though so I can get it the right size as well as make sure that it’s not too heavy but Mike is first.”
Sandra and Isabella looked at me as Mike shrugged. “So we’ll do what?” Isabella asked.
“I’m getting hungry,” Mike said, rubbing his stomach as he looked over the shield. “All that lifting was starting to wear me down. Can we maybe have some lunch? We brought a bunch of food and supplies over.”
“Sure!” Sandra grinned. “Come on, Izzy. Let’s take care of our men while they play with their toys.”
Isabella cracked a grin for the first time today. “They never grow up do they?”
“Nope, they just grow older.”
I ignored them as they sniped their funny little comments all the way to the kitchen. Feeling tired but good, I cracked one of my own. “At least they’re going where they belong huh?”
“What?”
“The kitchen!” My joke almost went over Mike’s head, almost. “Dude, focus, I know you’re not that slow. Come on, joke around or the depression will kill you. Humor heals or some shit like that.”
“It’s been a long day already,” Mike sighed, taking the shield and turning it around in his hands, examining it closer. “And it’s really only halfway done.”
“I hear ya man.” Clapping him on the shoulder, I started walking away. “While they make some food, we can chill for a moment and plan.” I grabbed two camping chairs from the shed and put them in the shade facing the ritual circle. “So do you like my plan? Ya know, making you a steel tank? I’m going to be doing something similar but mine will have a mix of stone and metal.”
Mike leaned back in his seat. “As long as I can move in it. And maybe something that I can use with my ‘Mental Hands’ ability. I was starting to get the hang of it in the house. It makes juggling a piece of cake.”
“You mean like this?” I put my pouch of throwing knives on his knee. “They’re not perfect. They’re just cheap throwing knives from Amazon. Cost me around thirty bucks a year ago. You could chuck’em, maybe guide them to their target.”
Mike opened up the black bag exposing the six very basic steel blades. Furrowing his brow in concentration, two of the knives floated out. It was as if an invisible toddler with uncoordinated hands was picking them up. As they wobbled just a bit, Mike held his right hand up underneath causing two more to float out. “This is so cool!” He gushed. “You got a target?”
“Sure man.” Retrieving a bit more scrap lumber from the shed, I put it on the ritual circle and used my Alchemy to shape it into an exaggerated dart board. The wood easily changed its shape according to my will, flowing to become a basic, seamless circular table top of wood. Pulling the five foot circle off the ground, I shaped the dirt ten feet away to form a slot where I stuck the target in. “Backyard target practice!” I said proudly. “Have at it!”
Each blade seamlessly split the target in the spot it hit, cracks running up and down from the point of impact. “Sorry,” he said sheepishly. “My ‘Shatterpoint’ ability lets me see the weaknesses, they light up like red spots to me. I couldn’t help it.”
“Don’t worry about it. Fixing things is super easy for me now. Besides, I think I’ve figured out how to make you deadly.”
Twenty minutes of cussing and heavy lifting later, mostly Mike because I was out of gas, Mike and I deposited the torn up sections of an old van in the backyard. We even hauled the motor and the seats. It was during that sweaty process that I was able to see exactly how dangerous Mike could be. He literally had multiple, barely visible floating hands with just as much strength as his physical ones that allowed to independently shift items, giving him much more leverage and allowing him to be his own lifting team. He could be his own tug of war team.
Most normal items are not actually too heavy to lift but they are too awkward for one man to lift such as a couch or a fridge, but Mike’s Mental Hands ability perfectly allowed him to do most of it on his own. I watched him carry a tire in each normal hand and then easily lift several more with his mental ones.
The man was a workhorse.
I went inside the house and retrieved a bunch of old jeans I had in my drawers and several sets of boots that I’d collected from over the years along with a few sets of work gloves. Placing them all in organized piles in the yard around the ritual circle, I started working on Mike’s gear. “Do these fit?” I asked, tossing him sets of boots, jeans, and gloves. Mike sorted through them and handed me the ones that fit. “Sweet. Tank time.”
Feeling the strain of pushing myself hard already, I ate some more food and took a fifteen minute break. I did use my time wisely, sketching out various designs and possible ideas in my notebook. My Alchemy ability, as far as I’d been able to determine so far, allowed me to rearrange the general shape and structure of an item into something completely different. But it only worked if I had enough of the required material. For instance, I could take a large wrench and Alchemically change it into a bunch of smaller screwdrivers, but I wouldn’t be able to make the classic wooden handle as the wrench had no wood to speak of. I would have to place a chunk of whatever kind of wood I needed to form said handles.
Using that basic idea, I could repair two badly ripped pairs of jeans through Alchemy, cannibalizing the material from one to make a perfectly repaired version of the other. The possibilities were endless! I could fix practically anything! Shape any tool that I needed or build something from the ground up using nothing but raw materials, will, and magic!
After another rest break, I felt better. The snacks and water really helped me get back to feeling closer to normal. Feeling rejuvenated, I got back to work. The hiking boots went into the ritual circle on top of a car tire and a torn off section of a car door. Placing my hands on the slightly raised stone border, I slowly flooded the constructed ritual circle with power. Each part of the process required its own mental visualization. The car door deconstructed and I mentally grabbed the steel, turning it into many strips of thin steel wire that were molded into the bottom of the boots and then a layer of tire rubber was then infused in and on top of that. With the bottom of the shoes made as durable as I could without sacrificing its flexibility, I then bonded more of the steel wire with material from the jeans and bonded it to the tops and sides of the boot. The shoestrings were rewoven with hyper-thin steel wires and then the toe of the boot was capped in flat, dull steel.
I concentrated as much as I could to interweave the steel wire into as many gaps as I could without interfering with the general flexibility of the boot. Taking my time really allowed me to fill in spots with rubber, fix the arch and I noticed that I could directly fuse my energy into certain pieces to alter how tough or flexible it was. The tire rubber could handle a surprising amount of energy before it loosened up without losing its toughness.
“Kicking in doors is easy with these bad boys!” I celebrated, tossing them to Mike. “My turn!” Figuring that I’d upgrade my stuff in tandem with Mike, I did the same with my own boots. After putting them back on, they did weigh a bit more but it didn’t actually bother me at all considering my new strength.
“Are those shin guards? Soccer shin guards?” Mike asked, looking at the gear I was taking off while slipping on the boots I gave him. “Can you make more of those? And maybe beef them up too?”
“Sure man.” I didn’t even notice our wives coming out with more food as I was so deep in concentration. But I noticed that each Alchemic working started going faster and faster as the process was generally the same but it became more and more familiar with practice. The steps almost became rote, adding in layers of braided hyper-thin steel wire to the clothes and gloves to add durability, jean material to fill in the gaps of fabric and reformed tire rubber in any and all places for impact absorption. The pile of Army OCP jackets I had in storage were now upgraded to be essentially bulletproof to small caliber pistols and bite-proof. The leather work gloves were now deadly on their own. Most everything was complete except for some of the armor items for the women which mainly just needed some resizing. My gear and Mike’s were significantly heavier, specifically reinforced as we would be the frontline. I had made extra shin guards for everyone else and then forearm guards and shoulder pads.
“Holy cow!” Mike exclaimed, taking in all the created armor that I had laid out as I lay in the grass next to it. “How do you think modern car steel stacks up against medieval plate armor?” Crouching over his own segmented suit, he examined each piece as his mental hands unconsciously picked up the others. It was weird to watch random ass things just start floating out of nowhere. I would’ve started flinging Bibles at people if I didn’t know that it was due to Mike’s power. Anyone could’ve mistaken what I saw for ghosts running wild.
“Put that down!” Isabella scolded, playfully frowning at him. “Food first, toys later.”
“Honey? Are you ok?” Sandra asked, leaning over the railing of the back deck. I just sat there panting, leaning against the ritual circle. Sweat dripped down my face and neck and a pervading sense of weakness forced me to recline.
“Need a minute, wow that took it outta me,” I gasped, sucking in air.
“Mike, help him!” Isabella scolded. Mike grinned as his mental hands helped me sit up. One of them appeared in front of me, glowing a solid red.
“Haha!” He yelled. “I can make them visible now too!”
I grabbed the hand, using it to hoist myself up. “Thanks.” Walking up the stairs like an old man, I felt like my stomach was about to claw its way out of my gut it was screaming so bad. The pile of thick sandwiches taunted me as I ravenously tore into the first one. Sandra also set a bunch of bananas in front of us. Before everyone grabbed one, I separated one and handed it to Sandra. “Keep it and see if you can make it grow. I bet your fruit trees that you’ve been growing inside can be altered for Virginia weather now with your plant magic. In fact . . .” I got up, still eating my sandwich.
Slowly hobbling to the kitchen, I grabbed an onion, a potato, and an apple from out of the pantry and brought them out. “We can plant all of these babe.”
“That is a fantastic idea!” Sandra smiled as she took the very basic plants. “Onions give everything flavor and go with just about everything. Drying and grinding up the parts of the onion you don’t usually use gives you onion powder. Potatoes grow pretty fast and cover almost everything in terms of nutrition.” The apple spun in the air three inches above her palm. “And I can get several apple trees out of this. All the fruit we need and the wood we can grow.”
“We just need a source of protein and we’ll survive just fine,” Isabella chimed in.
“Too bad your chickens got away.” Mike noted just before tearing into his sandwich. “We can fish in the pond near the canal path and the Rappahannock river isn’t far away either. Some people get decent size trout and catfish outta there. I never caught anything though but I’ve seen plenty of others who did.”
Lunch was finished in relative silence as everything mulled their own thoughts. I kept turning my latest foray into Alchemy over and over in my head. The energy expenditure over time tuckered me out but I was able to essentially outfit all of us in complete suits of armor that I’m pretty sure would keep us safe from any kind of less than modern weaponry. Mine and Mike’s were definitely thick enough to stop a handgun but I’m sure that the one I made for Isabella wouldn’t stop a bullet. I didn’t want to plan on making rifle-proof body armor and at this moment there really wasn’t a need to.
I’m also hoping Isabella figures out her stuff and quick. As I ate, I looked back upon the day’s events and noticed that I was able to do a lot of Alchemy, more than I probably should have. I scanned my status, pondering my traits because the Alchemic workings really took it out of me but was coming back fairly quickly. As far as I could tell, I’d put money down that it was the food but also part of that had to be related to the ‘Mana-Forged’ trait. Mana-Forged said that I had increased resistance to various energies but was also able to absorb them more quickly. I watched as the pile of sandwiches vanished while the early afternoon sun faded behind a few clouds in the tall window behind where my wife was sitting.
I knew what Sandra was thinking or at least I would put money down about it. She always makes that scrunched up face when she’s worrying and right now she’s worrying about her family. Our conversation about her ‘Planeswalker’ ability is probably rolling over in her mind, tumbling off each solution as she considers it and then discards them one after the other. My blue eyed Southern blonde wife is a practical woman, mature enough to weigh her future wants against her current situational needs. The idea of growing food is also bouncing around in that little noggin’. Our little suburban backyard garden was mainly for the fun of it, us growing little amounts of food as we learn the ropes of planting and harvesting and managing seasonal issues before our planned eventual move to the countryside. Now, this little garden might just become the foundation of our food supply, a necessary means of survival.
Isabella, now that woman I don’t really know. I get it, probably makes me a bad neighbor since they’ve been around for almost two years but what can I say? Sandra and I are hermits by nature. Peace and quiet for us isn’t just nice, it’s needed. Required. But Mike and Isabella seem to thrive on a much faster lifestyle, probably due to them being a bit younger and already having kids which Sandra and I were just a bit jealous of as we were working on it before the screwed up Advent kicked off. Isabella’s very petite five-foot frame was accentuated with a great figure that fit her size, brown hair that was always a bit frazzled, and curious brown eyes that were always roving around. Which, couldn’t really blame her. Mothers constantly have to watch out for rambunctious two year olds that are either on the warpath or jumping off something tall and unsteady. From where I sat, she kept unconsciously touching the tattoo of her baby, which I took to mean that she was thinking about her kids and being safe.
I turned my attention to her husband as I finished chewing the last of my sandwich. Mike is a simple guy. From our talks in passing when we borrowed each other's tools, I learned that he was a teacher in middle school and enjoyed carpentry. Standing a bit shorter than me, he had thick shoulders but used to be quite a bit slimmer than he was before the Advent. Magic is treating his body well, at least thirty pounds of his midsection were gone even though his face held on to the last bits of baby fat. On the personality side, he’s pretty nice and always working on something. Classic busy bee.
Not too long ago, Mike saw my raised bed gardens and then decided to make his own, but bigger and better of course. Again, to be fair, he probably meant it in the nicest way possible. He did offer to help me make better ones. I watched him nervously glance around, before getting back to wolfing down his food. He kept his shoulders all bunched up, just enough for his clothes to completely cover up his magical tattoo. I’d bet that he was thinking about the kids as well. He kept looking at the armor out of the corner of his eye and then sighing when looking down.
I wanted to finish getting people fitted in the armor and then I wanted to rest for an hour or two. After that, very basic house fortifying would be on the docket. Every skinny ass window and old bit of construction of the house was a liability in my mind. Houses nowadays are not built for any kind of conflict, in fact they’re either death traps for you or someone else, usually both. Urban conflict is right up there with jungle conflict in terms of deadliness. There’s no such thing as ‘cover’, only concealment. Unfortunately, we have years of experience in the Middle East to prove it.
Fucking pointless wars. Just as I thought that, Isabella spoke up.
“We need to go to church.”
Both Sandra and I whipped around to gape at Isabella. “Wha?”
“That’s a great idea.” Mike said solemnly, nodding his head.
“Huh?”
