The front of the car wasn’t suddenly deep in dune sand because we’d plunged into a hole, or into quicksand. It turned out the tendrils of grass still scattered in the sands were working in concert with the vines. All of them had a life of their own.
I hadn’t been paying enough attention. Only when a cloud of sand burst apart in front of us and sent the whole car rocking did I realize that we weren’t just driving on ordinary terrain…that the layers of dead dirt separating us from live plants were far thinner than expected.
Masses of combined tall grass and thorny vines wrapped around the hood. It was hard for me to see from the back, but I heard a crunch of glass—just one. They had cracked the windshield, but no other windows. And no bodies, yet.
The whole party burst into action. Two Ice Spells blasted from the back row. Only one of them raced ahead. The other erupted underneath the car, turning the sand into crystal with a freezing current that spread mesmerizingly fast.
As I glanced down to watch, I gasped. There, just below me, were tendrils like green worms just about to reach up and snare me…frozen just in time.
The front of the car jolted with a blast of wind that sent frozen plants flying and attempted to steady the car again in a single burst. It also made me nauseous.
I was flinging my head around, trying to observe all I could, just wondering how I could possibly help—but, well, to my amazed pleasure, it looked like my friends pretty much had it covered. We were back on the road, still speeding ahead, just with Bayce and Heidschi sticking their heads and arms out either back-row window, prepared to launch more strikes.
There had to be a better vantage point for me than this. On the back of the truck, I felt like dead weight. But was running beside the car really the best option?
If only we had a roof. Then I could try standing up there and get a three-sixty view of things. Heck, if only I had a Logy! Then I could just grab onto her and dangle.
But I could always stand higher up on the back of the car… It’d be pretty precarious, to say the least.
I gritted my teeth, slammed my shoe and shoeless foot onto the tops of the handholds, and slapped my hands on the top of the trunk. My claws could give me a better grip if I needed it, but that would dent Reed’s car, and I did not want Them to make me dent Reed’s car.
Then I pushed my shoulders up, leaned out, looked out. This was better.
But once I took a breath and used a Meditate, what I saw from that vantage point was a dire warning.
I wasn’t the wisest person, but I’d plunged in and out of meditative, analytic states, and I was even learning to speed up the process. Plus, I knew the forest better than anybody, even the magenta-haired girl who’d lived here for years. Most people looking for signs of fresh attacks might search for the same thing I’d just seen: more green worms, big or small. But that is thinking too small and too typically human.
If you want to sense difference from a distance, you really need to think bigger and with all of your senses. You need to notice everything that’s different. And then you need to combine it with a sprinkle of logic…
To lay out the facts: we were hurtling downward, through dunes and ridges, at roughly a thirty-degree angle.
Around us remained a massive expanse of sand and, ahead of us, a heavy concentration of dandelion trees.
My Map showed aggressive magic plants all around us—or below us—or both.
One would think that a patch of sand with living, active things below it wouldn’t look or sound any different from one without them. Lizards hide in sand all the time, and everything stays completely still.
And yet…
SP 71% (603/855)
WIS 164 (+50%)
There were several spots, around us and up ahead, that just looked different.
It wasn’t color. It could be aura. The patches just looked flatter, almost a little too still. Maybe they weren’t moving the right way in the wind. Maybe magic simply existing around them changed them in some unknowable way.
Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author's preferred platform and support their work!
I could see exactly which spots up ahead should be avoided.
I feared that our limited Spells wouldn’t be enough.
But also, I couldn’t speak, I couldn’t drive, and this was time-sensitive. Mercifully, I had a little library of “meow” variations based on Reed’s set of signals, and I could holler over the engine and the sand blowing over my face. Unmercifully, these weren’t more specific than “left” and “right.” There was no “left one meter, now go right half a meter, no that’s too far, never mind keep going right.”
If I straight-up spiderwalked over the car to sit by Reed, then either grabbed the controls and prayed or gave her impromptu gesture-directions, I could do more harm than good. (A careening car out of control could technically be faster and more effective than this one, though.)
Wait. This was thinking too small again. I needed to think outside the box.
What did I literally have to do? Keep my friends safe. The easiest way was to avoid the stuff up ahead. We didn’t have to drive out of its path, though…
I tapped Bayce on the shoulder again. She was a little startled by the new angle, but keen to listen.
Then I spelled with one hand. “DONT PANIC BUT IM MOVING THE CAR”
“Wait, what?”
But there was no time to lose. The first off-putting spot was coming up, and I ducked out of Bayce’s view.
Clambering over the sides of the car made everything just a bit more treacherous. I was officially fighting my gag reflex tooth and nail as I juddered along the lumpy dunes, but more than that, I was fighting with the wood-and-metal surface of the jeep. Especially my feet—though kicking off my other sandal made that easier.
There’s only so many handholds on a car, even on one you’d think would be postapocalyptic-wasteland-ready! I gave up, apologized under my breath, and started stabbing my way over to the side of the car with Heidschi and Reed.
Soon I was crouching on the car’s edge, by those doors. I inched my way along. Sweat trickling sideways like rain would on the windows, sand glittering into my eyes, I focused not on my blinking sight, not on my ears, but on a timer in my head. I had an idea of when we would come up on that first patch of stillness.
This was the easy part, right? I had a good internal clock…didn’t I?
Well, a bit too early was fine—anything as long as it wasn’t horribly late.
Soon I ended up on Reed’s door. My aviator cap seemed to be keeping my hair from fluttering too high up and spooking the driver. Phew. My hind legs retracted their claw-nails, then pushed against the sand with all I had.
I didn’t even Leap. I just pushed like I was Hercules.
We were not squandering all our Ice Spells on some bits of crunchy grass!
The jeep rocked out of the way—
Only about twenty centimeters.
“Agh!”
“Don’t panic, Reed, she’s moving the car!”
Undeterred, I kicked again right away. I was determined not to Leap if I could help it, because SP could also be squandered.
This time, the car swerved a little more, maybe thirty centimeters in all.
A push at the front, of course, means a turn for the entire vehicle. Just a few more seconds on the same trail, and the whole thing’d move a lot farther than a few piddly centimeters.
Both pushes had taken a lot out of me, and all my muscles felt stings of fatigue—actually, my fingers felt it worse than anything else—but inwardly, I felt so relieved. And I knew my muscles were recovering by the minute.
Reed hollered to Bayce, “So I keep driving this way?”
“Keep driving this way!”
“Meow!” I affirmed.
And as vines erupted just beside us, then behind us, I could only sag my shoulders in a moment of relief.
Okay, we had more time before the next patch, so I wouldn’t have to do all that. I gave a meow of warning to everyone before clambering up, crawling over the partition between the front seats and the back seats, and plunking myself beside Chora again. Then I took her spirit paper and wildly pointed.
“Reed!” Chora cried. “See that place up ahead, there to there?” She let me gesture to the strange patch. “Steer clear.”
“Got it.” With a stiff nod and a hearty thank-you, Reed swerved the car away, and Chora gave me the slightest bow. We were back on track.
More patches were popping up before my eyes—well, technically, lying down. They were a little more obvious now, so much that Chora could see the closest ones. She told me they looked “kind of flat.” I knew they weren’t flat, they were just incorrect. Curling the wrong way, countering the breeze instead of flowing with it.
With Chora and I working together to point them out, and Reed laser-focused on the drive, our trip was a lot simpler now. What grasses and vines screeched up behind us raced to grab us, but only for fleeting moments. Soon they lost interest—or maybe life—and crumpled to the ground.
But with this many pockets of magical plants, we couldn’t avoid everything. The big ones, yes, but the smaller splotches, no. Compound that with how Reed couldn’t exactly maneuver with ease on this rough terrain. Tires can’t help but hit a few snags in the best of times.
So we had seconds before we crossed into a veritable minefield.
I watched, my gut sinking, as several masses of vines reared up ahead. They were coming out of hiding earlier than I’d expected. They knew their minefield had us surrounded, and now they were clumping together into a curved wall. They were strong, but we were smarter and craftier.
Bayce raised her wand and Heidschi raised a fist, both about to launch Fire Spells. This was good, but I doubted it was enough. They’d need some protection as the fire spread through all those vines, because a few little sparks of flame, no matter how powerful, don’t eat an entire plant wall that fast.
It was time for me to stand up on the car seat and pull out my secret weapon…of sorts.
Not the Debug Blade. I had no interest in equipping and unequipping and dropping my sword irrevocably into the deadly dunes. No, this was an experimental weapon…and kind of a cheap one. It was the Pyrite Machete.
Reed had literally made it last night. By “made,” I mean she dug it out of her closet before bed thinking it was a golden machete, then realized it was actually a crinkly slab of pyrite molded into a bladelike shape. Why did it exist? She said it was from a school play, and purely decorative. With a little sharpening and burnishing, though, it looked…
Almost passable. I seemed to be holding a yellow slab of aluminum. But besides Reed’s big broadsword, it was the only other blade in the house!
It’d have to do. It would do!
Fires were thrown, and I thought, Engarde.