As it turns out, magic may not have been better. While riding on Spot further east, my conversation with Johnny showed me that his fucking wish was beyond over-powered.

“When that weird ass high hit, like a few months ago and told me to make a wish, I did! I was like balls deep in some hottie after a couple weed brownies and I screamed at the heavens, ‘I wanna cultivate some power!’ right at the end there. And dude, man, I’mma’ live forever!” he said.

When I snorted back a small laugh, he got defensive making his voice go up hilariously in pitch. “Yo! It’s awesome! Trust me, this shit is beyond real!” Johnny crowed as Spot leisurely walked alongside the river. I mean, I know it’s fucking real, mainly because I couldn’t get Johnny to shut up about it. He wished to be like a character in some weird Chinese novel or someone from a show called Dragonball Z. According to him, a cultivator is something that internalizes power, some ethereal external power, and uses it to empower itself. He went on to describe going up in power over time, staving off old age by banging hot asian chicks while simultaneously doing some hippie-one-with-the-earth shit.

Hearing it was fucking funny, but my magical senses showed me that a veritable storm of power rested inside of that kid. Most of it was some kind of diffuse cloud, but at the very center there was a tiny pea-sized dots of super condensed power that seemed to have its own gravity. Maybe this was the dude Merlin wanted me to get. I mean, probably. He’s annoying, incredibly powerful, long-lived if he isn’t dumb, and very durable, uhg.

“Right, I gotchu’,” I said, “But how does it work. I mean, I use mana, which is the stuff magic is made of. My soul produces some, I can see that you make some, the earth has rivers of it, the sky has currents, living things produce it . . . Do you see where I’m going with this?”

“Bruh, it’s all around you. You just gotta feel it, like meditate, take it in, woosah!”

Let’s try a different track. “So, with my magic, I can conjure, manipulate, and banish a bunch of different elements. What can a cultivator do?” I asked, almost slow enough to be insulting.

“Anything man. I’m like Goku, just get stronger over time.”

“Johnny, come on now,” I said a little more kindly, “I did just save your ass from Kong and his troop of poo-flingin’ monkeys. Just tell me something’.”

Just as he opened his mouth to answer, we arrived at the clearing in front of the World Tree. I hopped off Spot and faced Johnny. “Better yet,” I said, “Just show me.”

Johnny didn’t move from his spot.

“I’m not going to touch your banana,” I said with a straight face, “Nor do I want to.”

Still nothing. Seriously, no reaction to the most obvious penis joke. This fucking fifteen year old didn’t even crack a smile. Uhg, the Ripple changed everything.

“Spot . . .” I said, to which the big dog bucked the kid right off. He landed way too gracefully, which made that small mean part of me like him even less. Looking at me, then back at the towering canine, Johnny walked over to the edge of the clearing and gently set it down.

“You gonna tell me about that banana or is that another mystery?” I teased.

Turning around, the kid gave me a solemn martial arts bow, his face peaceful. A sonic boom later, he was right in front of me, his right foot coming up to punt me right where he shouldn’t. Thank all the stars above that my magical armor engaged a force field way faster than what my unengaged surprised brain ever could. Rationally, it’s a low blow, technically, it’s a fight winner. We males are are given a weakness, comparative to females, as we generally are bigger, faster and stronger. The downside is, that if we face another male, we have a level playing field but both sides have a gruesome weakness. This little fuck however, was more than willing to hit below the belt.

Johnny’s foot, with all the momentum of his power behind it, smacked into my immovable magical force field that drew its stability from mother earth. This caused a beautiful burst of kinetic feedback that instead of sending me to the moon or begging for mercy, Johnny’s foot was blasted back causing him to somersault directly into my shield, his face smooshed against it like a dog smackin’ into a glass door.

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“A friendly spar you dick!” I yelled at him as he shook himself off. “Sheesh, I promise, I mean you no harm.”

The blood running down from his broken nose combined with the lack of words was an answer in and of itself. The friendly portion was over fast. The soft blue of the force field rippled every place the exploding blur that was Johnny touched it, and he touched it with the force of a sledgehammer. Taking a firm grip on Gungnir, I posted up like Gandolf and slammed the base of my spear into the dirt and drew up some of the residual energy lurking down there. It wasn’t a leyline but Mother Earth’s rivers leave many pools lying around.

My overpowered shield just kept absorbing the barrage of attacks, the runes on my armor soaking up some of the kinetic energy while both portions of Svalinn was greedily devouring the strange energy that Johnny’s attacks were giving off. Reaching out with my magic, I turned all of the earth around me into quicksand while making the quicksand itself repel me. A nice depth of about four feet was more than enough to stop any normal attacker.

“Hey! Hey! That’s not cool!” Johnny yelled from the muck. Grabbing big handfuls of it, he futilely started hurling it at me. “It’s nasty and it’s sucking me in!”

“That’s what he said!” I howled, laughing at his sheer bewilderment. “Dude, relax, I just wanted to know what you could do. I’ll even heal your nose, for free.”

“Then let me out!” he yelled, twisting and turning to get out. I felt a small pulse of something come from Johnny as he stood still and closed his eyes, his hands coming together like a prayer. After a second of utter stillness, he placed his hands out and a long silvery staff appeared. It extended in length to about thirty feet. Johnny placed the staff in front of him in the quicksand and I noticed that the two far edges of it were out past the quicksand. “Haha sucker!” he yelled, grabbing the staff and pushing himself up and out of the muck like a gymnast doing the extra part of a pullup that makes everyone hate them.

Not only was he strong enough to fight the vacuum of quicksand, but that freaky staff was strong enough to hold his weight even though it was only about an inch thick. Like a cat, he ran down the improvised balance beam, jumped dramatically to the packed earth, rolling and turning to pick up his weapon. Without taking his eyes off me, he began to spin and flip the luminescent staff around, faster and faster until it was a blur of silvery light. Suddenly, Johnny went still, his staff pointed directly at me, his feet set with his body sideways to present a smaller target. The silver particles that made up this weapon were even brighter than they were before.

“If you can take my final blow,” he said as I snickered. Seriously, I couldn’t help myself.

“What is so funny?” he yelled shrilly, a slight wobble of his staff let me know that he wasn’t as calm as he was trying to be.

“Come on now,” I giggled, “You can do better than that. This ain’t no fucking anime show dude. Why in the world would I let you have time to get ready for a final blow?” Mockery dripped from every word. “This is the end of the world as we know it man, and it’s been like this for a while. Trust me, just take a look behind you.”

Johnny snuck a look behind himself. Unbeknownst to him, at my direction, Spot had silently crept up to Johnny, his slavering jaws barely holding in the drool that was nearly as hot as magma. All it would have taken for Spot to have a small human sized snack was a mere thought from me.

“You act all big and bad,” I continued, “As if you’re the most powerful kid on the block, but in reality, you’re nothing. I am nothing, we are all nothing, even Spot is nothing. I didn’t really want to have a dick measuring contest but here we are. Spot . . .”

My tank sized canine used his nose to knock Johnny to the ground and then set one heavy paw right on his chest. Oh so delicately, he reached down and picked up the “stick” with his mouth and looked at me. “Good boy,” I chuckled. Walking forward, I took the staff and hurled it behind me, to which Spot reacted by bounding after it, bowling me over and smashing Johnny into the dirt.

“See what I mean,” I gasped, “Nothing. That’s all we are.” I turned my head to see the kid, his eyes wide open as he clutched his chest, struggling for breath. “A damn dog took both of us out in a heartbeat because he wanted a stick. And I made that dog. Imagine what else is out there that can and might do way worse.”

Using my flesh sorcery, I fixed the micro-tears in my muscles and the hairline fractures in my ribs, then walked over and squat next to Johnny. “Try and relax for a minute, I’m going to heal you, and then, you’re going to help me.”

Ten minutes later, Johnny was in my under-tree hideout holding a mug of coffee, looking at me like I was some kind of monster hidden in a human skin. “I know, you don’t trust me,” I started, “But it only gets weirder and honestly much more awesome in both the good and bad way from here on out.”

An eyebrow rose as he looked at me, then at the unconscious form of Reeanth in the chair behind me. “Yeah, she’s part of it, but that’s only the beginning. So, what do I have to do to make you believe that I’m a good guy, or a good enough guy, huh?”

He took a quick sip of coffee and then sighed. “Ya know, I don’t know,” Johnny muttered, “I haven’t even seen another human since it happened, and this seems too good to be true. I mean, don’t sorcerers sacrifice to demons an shit’? That dog looks like it’s got some demon in it.”

“First off, I’m pretty much a druid, so demons and me don’t click,” I explained, “And the dog, who’s name is Spot by the way, has some dragon in him, not demon. I haven’t even seen a demon that I know of. I’ve seen dragons, deities, zombies, mutant animals and fucked up paladins. I think I incinerated a vampire too. Oh, and my wife is a fucking tree. So, everything is weird, get used to it.”

“Soooo, how’d you get to be this way, I mean, druids are dope but,”

“I was drunk when the Ripple hit,” I said, crossing my arms, “And I got what I wished for. My woman also got what she wished for, but in the most literal of meanings. Sleepyhead over there,” pointing at Reeanth, “is an advanced wizard soldier from the Alpha Centauri Empire and she wished for a sorcery of her own.”

“And I’m a badass cultivator!” Johnny said smugly, his stupid grin at odds with the glint of street-smarts I saw lurking in his eyes. “Give me enough time, and I’ll be able to do anything. We get stronger and faster and more powerful the older we get.”

“Well, how about if I help you grow a bit,” I suggested, “I mean, a sorcerer can do many things, but what would give you a leg up, armor, weapons?”

Setting his mug down, he took at me a bit funny. “How easy is it for you to heal?” he asked, “And how long can you do it?”