Beam POV: Day 51

Current Wealth: 1 silver 47 copper

We had a few more hours of daylight to burn, but my contribution was just about done. The trainees needed rest, and I wasn’t much help in tracking resources or turning them into bombs. Which left me with more time to meditate.

I used it, sitting with my legs folded and my eyes closed, controlling my breathing. Forcing myself to relax against the biting tension of imminent danger. Perhaps there were more productive things to be doing, a few hours’ extra practice on my own end for example.

But I’d already worked on my movements and conditioning today, and every other day of the last week. There’d be no new advantage to find there. If I wanted an edge, it would be magical.

Half an hour, one hour, ninety minutes. It was around then that I finally put an end to it, boredom, irritation and frustration winning over any rational I might’ve clung to.

What had the stupid voice in my head said? It could only show me the ropes. I cursed. Better to have spent the time practising.

Standing, I looked around me, surveying the surroundings for a suitably large target to test my power on. Then realising that even that much just defeated the point. I was supposed to be capable of turning anything into one, right? So I’d practise just that. I forced my gaze to stop on the next thing that caught it, and, probably through sheer probability, that thing happened to be snow.

White, blemishless, clinging to the hard ground so stiff and rigid that I might’ve stubbed my toe on it. The world wasn’t getting colder, anymore, but I guessed that was only because it’d already gotten as chilly as the air could withstand. Touching something at that temperature would be unpleasant to say the least.

I strode over, bent down and stuffed my hand against it all the same. Probably I’d need to grab things a lot less enjoyable than just snow if I was to get more mileage out of this ability.

The cold seeped in quickly, but I ignored it. However deep and cruel, it was still just pain. I felt more every time I was on my second to last rep, and putting it aside didn’t even bring me close to my limits.

But then I reconsidered. Ignoring pain was good, normally, but here…Here I was trying to connect with whatever I touched. How did one connect with an inanimate substance? Well, generally unsuccessfully. I didn’t want to do it unsuccessfully, that sounded like the sort of thing that would lead to my friends being eaten by undead, so I’d have to change things up a bit.

I couldn’t talk to snow, couldn’t ask it questions, couldn’t profess any emotions to it or read any in exchange. But I could feel what it did to me, and how it felt to my senses. If only for want of any better alternative, I started concentrating on the sensation.

My fingers were half numb, half ablaze with pain. It felt more like grabbing something hot than cold, an ineffable burning against my skin, seeping in and making every muscle convulse in protest. I grit my teeth against it, forced my mind back onto the site of agony, keeping my thoughts from scattering and focus from wandering.

What was I feeling? Pain, obviously, but where from? From the lack of heat, from the very sensation of that heat being dragged out of my flesh, kicking and screaming. I wasn’t feeling a substance at all, then, I was feeling a natural void being filled. Sure enough the snow started to wet itself, bleeding into water and pooling under me as the temperature of my skin broke down ice crystals and left the remaining ones to drown in their corpses.

It might’ve just been some weird disassociation from the pain, but I started to see ice crystals breaking down in my eyes. Like metal melting in a crucible, seeing their microscopic patterns collapse and crumble as the heat washed through them, picturing the resultant water swallowing others and clinging to my hands in its tension. My mind fell deeper into the vision, concentration soon consumed by it in totality, and before long even the pain was gone.

The pain was gone, but I wasn’t ignoring it. It just…Wasn’t there. How could it be? I was beloved of the world, I could hardly expect it to hurt me.

Somehow the words felt right, felt correct. Somehow I knew them even before they occurred to me. And the moment they echoed through my mind, I felt another change.

I’d felt it before, and recognition burned so bright in my mind that I almost missed what was happening now. A coagulating rush of power, of life itself, building and diffusing from the snow as pale vapour. Like steam, like fog, like snow- and yet something else entirely. I grabbed it hard, held it tight, and felt it rest in my hand as its volume gained mass and its surface gained strength.

After a few moments, I was holding another cylindrical length, this time white where the last had been grey. Glowing all the same. I felt it in my hands, moved it around, and marvelled at the lightness of it. It was like a weapon made out of…Not even wood, something lighter. Polystyrene, cardboard. With all the strength of stone.

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It took practice not to send it flying out of my grip with the slightest motion, and I gave myself that practice as I walked back to meet my friends.

Suddenly feeling quite a lot more confident than I had before.

Everyone else was already gathered in the mayor’s hall, more or less, and Xangô had already made himself something of an executive board at its back. The man I’d seen following him around- Tucker, I think his name was- was leaning over a table talking to him, Solitaire was in one corner, fiddling with some metal. The whole place smelled of human habitation and…Something else, too. Not gunpowder, God knew I’d inhaled enough of that to recognise it, something more simple. Iron? Iron. It smelled like a smithy.

I made myself known with a cleared throat, taking a seat by the table and throwing my gaze out through the open door. Beyond it lay the building’s main hall, and it was an impressive sight, I had to say.

Solitaire had clearly been given run of the place, because it didn’t resemble anything less than one of his schizo-bunkers anymore. Big walls of wood had been placed up, embedded through the planked ground, reinforced by big logs angled upwards into their backs at some 45 degrees from behind. They had holes in them, too small for a person but just big enough for a spear, and barbs lining the tops that I could only imagine would shred a person who tried to climb them.

Above I saw more logs, these ones larger, heavier. Held aloft by long lengths of rope that’d been looped around the high ceiling’s rafters. I followed the rope, found it bound down on the defender’s side, and realised what it was for. Untying them, we could drop hundreds of kilos of tree trunk down on anything within a few feet of the barricades. Ouch.

Someone had torn a bunch of planks out in big strips from the edge of our barricades to the main entrance, essentially creating rows of minitiar trenches that’d be a nightmare to sprint through without falling, and behind the barricades themselves were more. Then more still. Row after row of defensible positions, all ready to be abandoned and re-assembled beside.

From the actual office Xangô was using as his meeting room, I was looking down on it all. A staircase led upwards from the main killing-room down below, raising perhaps two stories into the air. Something big and covered in cloth was resting at the top of it, something I’d had to squeeze by to get in. I turned to Solitaire, question dying on my lips as he grinned.

“You’ll see.” The madman told me, and I suddenly found his grin leaving my curiosity a bit weakened. Somehow I imagined I would see, and somehow I felt a lot less eager to do so.

“How are your ribs?” I asked him, and he sighed, massaging them irritably.

“Painful, but healed. I can swing a nice big block of wood around with no issues. You alright?”

I almost screamed my answer out, so eager was I to share it.

“I managed to tap into my magic on purpose.” I told him, grinning. “I think we can count that as one extra edge during the attack.”

Solitaire’s grin was wide in the same way a wolf’s might be, the same way it always was when he imagined bodies coming apart and blood staining his skin. I hid how much that disconcerted me.

“You have magic?” A voice cut out from behind me, low, blunt. I turned to see Argar leaning against a wall, grinning. Not like Solitaire. He was less a cat looking down on a mouse, and more a kitten looking up at a playmate. A 7 foot tall, 400 pound kitten, mind, who could lift a powerlifter over his head, but still a whole lot fluffier.

“Some.” I replied, quickly, cursing myself for letting slip what I had. The giant didn’t seem bothered one way or another, merely shrugging.

“I’ll have to kill fast, then.” He grunted. “Can’t have you stealing all the rotters before I get to them.”

“Nobody’s stealing anything.” Xangô cut in, glaring up at him. “We’re all going to stay nice and safe behind our barricades and poke the rotters while they try to get past, if we ever actually exchange a blow with them, it’ll be because we’ve already fucked up.”

“Which we will.” Solitaire added. “Just to be clear, we’re not holding off hundreds of…” His lip curled. “Humans, not when they essentially have late-stage rabies and a pound of cocaine in their blood.”

Argar stared at him, blankly, and Solitaire sighed.

“Not when they’re very angry and very strong.” He amended. “So you’ll be getting your fight, and we need everyone to understand that there will be a fight. Because otherwise they might panic when it all kicks off, and if they start screaming and crying then I might not be able to resist beheading them, even apart from the obvious tactical issues it’ll cause.”

The giant nodded at that, seeming pleased despite the chaos being described. I just went cold.

It was one thing to know we’d be attacked, even to know that it would happen soon. Quite another, apparently, to be so precipitously near to the event that we were discussing tactics and counters. How long would we have before I was stuck into a bloodbath with everyone else? Hours?

My answer came soon enough, a shrill, panicked warning cry running through the length of the building and sending a shiver down my spine.

“ROTTERS!” A sentry called out, voice cracking with his fear. “THEY’RE HERE!”

I climbed to my feet, closing my eyes and running my hand down the length of a wall, focusing on the texture of oaken panelling as it grazed my fingertips. Feeling all the magics rearing their heads again.

Time to test my new powers.