Jeremy had gotten pretty damned good at creating fire-starting enchantments a couple of days later. He had a whole bundle of enchanted sticks that worked very well, although they had discovered that after a couple of uses the stick itself broke down under the flow of mana and more often than not burst into flames no matter how good the initially carved runes were.
Because he could see the mana, Jeremy was able to tell that it was literally because the flow of it was breaking down the structure of the wood and damaging the runes themselves until they no longer functioned. When he asked Hazel about it, the elf seemed unsurprised and cited this as another reason why wood was not the most desirable material for enchanting.
“But wait,” Jeremy asked, fresh off a conversation he’d had with Moira to compare with her what they both were learning about enchanting and planning to use it for, “Does it break down everything organic? Even clothes and things?”
“Well, if it is something destructive, yes.” Hazel nodded.
Jeremy put a hand on his forehead and felt a new headache on the horizon. “What do you mean by destructive?”
“Well, a fire-starting enchantment for example.”
For being as helpful as Hazel truly was, it was frustrating to get anything useful out of him sometimes. Jeremy rubbed his fingers over his eyes and sighed.
“What about an enchantment that would strengthen clothing against tears?” he asked.
“Then that mana would not be destructive, and it would not degrade the object,” Hazel said.
That was a good thing, even if it added yet another layer of complexity to the whole matter or enchanting. Apparently, depending on its intended effect, the mana itself could take on different properties. At least Moira would not have to abandon her project to create enchanted clothes. Apparently, the Adventurer’s Guild—Jeremy rolled his eyes every time he heard the name they had settled on—was making headway in enchanting armor.
“But what about the scan enchantment, then?” Jeremy asked. To him, that seemed neutral. It was not doing anything except creating an illusion.
“It would degrade the material,” Hazel said, crushing his hopes and dreams of getting a working prototype done in any reasonable amount of time, yet again. “Remember that demonic magic is technically the absorption of things, the gradual return to chaos, the ‘entropy’ as you called it.”
Jeremy kicked a rock and scowled. They were on the outskirts of the next little congregation of suburbs, getting close to skirting around the city again as they made their way to his parents’ house. The highways and long stretches of roads with nothing but woods, fields, and thick, invasive vines climbing the utility poles had given way to cross-streets, yards, and entrances to cul-de-sacs with names like Hickory Glen and Elk View.
Jeremy did not think there had ever been Elk in Virginia, but whatever. Stranger things have happened he supposed.
Currently, they were on the hunt for a coffee shop or some other establishment where they could find some free wifi for Zanie to upload the little newsletter she had been putting together. And all of them needed to charge their phones. Every power bank they carried with them was drained by that point. And some food that did not come out of a can would be nice, but Jeremy did not have his hopes up for that one. At least a little coffee would do.
“What the heck should I use to make my prototype then?” he asked. “I mean, carving wood isn’t too difficult, but how am I supposed to enchant something durable enough to withstand such a complicated spell?”
“Would rock work?” Caleb asked, letting the rocks he had been commanding to whizz around in various formations drop into his palm. While Jeremy had been busy practicing enchantments and Zanie had been putting together the newsletter as they traveled, he had been honing his skills with magic as usual. He held up one of the pebbles.
“Better than wood,” Hazel nodded.
“It’s not so hard to carve into rock,” Caleb tossed the pebble in Jeremy’s direction and he caught it. “Remember that time we went up to the overlook and carved our names?”
“That took forever, Caleb,” Jeremy reminded him, unimpressed.
“Yeah, well, that’s cause we only had a pocket knife. But there were other people’s names up there that were cut in nice and deep because they probably used chisels or something.” He held his hand up and Jeremy tossed the pebble back to him. “We just need to get you a chisel.”
“And a rock, I suppose.” Jeremy sighed. Zanie, who had been listening to all of this silently, rolled her eyes and laughed at them.
“What is this, the stone age?” She chuckled. “Magic didn’t set the world back thousands of years or anything, guys. We can just get some kind of durable metal, steel plates or something, and engrave them with the runes.”
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“Depending on the metal, that would be a significantly more durable material than rock,” Hazel added.
“Alright, maybe if the prototype works and we want to start making a bunch of these, but for now, I guess a rock and a chisel will do. That seems easier than trying to engrave steel.” Jeremy frowned and looked around.
They were in a little township, where the suburban life sprawled around then cinched together and gathered around a post office, grocery store, gas station, fast food joint, and other various necessities of civilization. It was unfortunately not the best place to find just a regular old rock.
So, they decided to hit the little bagel shop in the lone strip mall to see if it was stocked with food and/or had power. Some of the businesses had to be open, because there were cars lined up in the parking lot, unless they had been hastily abandoned for some reason or another. Usually, he would not think that was the case, aside from the people who abandoned their cars due to the traffic on the highways and such, this had been more of a world altering event where people listened to emergency updates on the radio or their phones as they quickly drove home to shelter in place. There was not much of a reason to abandon a car in a strip mall parking lot, except for the fact that a large chunk of the left end of the building was decimated.
It looked like it had been hit by a tornado, just a single narrow bath of destruction that left the rest of the long building untouched, but had ripped down the walls, collapsed the roof, and smashed everything in between on the one end.
But the open sign was blinking in the bagel shop. So, it at least was open and had power. Caleb opened the door, and they filed inside, where it became clear that even if the open sign was blinking, the shop was not open for business in the traditional sense. The door had been unlocked, but the lights were not on and nobody sat at the tables or even stood behind the counter to take their orders.
“Hello?” Caleb called out, letting the door shut behind them.
No response came. Just like the outside of the shop had been untouched by whatever destroyed the end of the building, the interior looked completely in order. The tables were lined up and chairs pushed in. Aside from the lack of people, and—as Jeremy looked closer—lack of any food in the curved glass cases or refrigerator to one side of the counter, it looked just like it might any other day,
“Okay,” Zanie said slowly, “I don’t like this. This is creepy.”
“It’s probably fine,” Caleb gestured toward the open sign, the blinking of which they could see reflected against the window.
“I bet that runs on a battery,” Jeremy sighed.
“I’m going to go see what’s up in the back,” Caleb marched toward the counter and the door that led into the back kitchen where they presumably made their bagels when in normal operation.
“He’d be the first to die in a horror movie,” Zanie scoffed as she watched him disappear through the door.
“Oh, yeah.” Jeremy chuckled and went over to the display refrigerator, unhappy because it was not whirring. If the lights were off, the refrigerator off, and the open sign battery-operated, their chances of getting free wifi were slim. Perhaps this place had also been impacted by the metal eating slimes.
The news was still trying to cover everything as best it could, but with all the power outages, general chaos that still reigned as new protests popped off and creatures continued to collide with their infrastructures—dams had been crumbling rapidly all over the country, a dragon had taken to roosting in the New York Subway’s 6 Line, and people were starting to panic about no apparent end to the lack of food on the shelves—it was difficult for reporters to cover everything thoroughly. But between the established news outlets and social media, it was clear that a good quarter, if not more, of the area was out of power.
This would probably last a long time without being fixed, given the circumstances. Things would become a lot harder without a reliable power grid. They only had one solar-rechargeable battery pack and it took forever to charge up. But it might be their only option.
The door banged open as Caleb returned from the depths of the shop, looking sorely disappointed and holding his vibrating phone out to Jeremy. “Your mom. Make it quick cause I’m only at ten percent.”
Jeremy took the phone and accepted the call. “Hey mom.”
“Hey, honey. Glad I caught you.” She sounded cheery, but Jeremy could also hear the undercurrent of relief in her voice. “We couldn’t reach you for a couple of days.”
“Yeah, we were out of range for cell service for a little bit,” Jeremy put a hand on the glass door of the fridge and tapped his fingers against it, disappointed, despite already knowing it would be, to find it warm. “Sorry. How are things going there?”
“Well, they are okay. The neighborhood has banded together with some of the local organizations—town council, most of the churches, some of the farming associations, and the like—to come up with a plan for rations over the winter and spring. It doesn’t seem like the federal government is going to be able to get it’s head out of it’s ass long enough to do something for us, so…”
“That’s great, mom.” Jeremy was genuinely glad to hear it.
“It’s just a bit of a challenge working with the farmers, because they need to make sure that they are able to make ends meet to support next summer’s growing season, but I think we’re going to be able to work something out where they just work with us directly. But we have to figure out processing all the food so that we don’t have to bring in the canning companies and all of the shipping that is involved with that.”
Jeremy imagined his father, who loved home-canning and that type of thing, would rise to that occasion beautifully. He could envision the man directing all the people who were just sheltering in place and now without jobs given the current state of the world into assembly-line style canning. No doubt they would have something figured out by the time he got there.
“Sounds like things are going pretty well there.” Jeremy scowled at Caleb, who made a hurry-it-up gesture. “Do you guys still have power?”
“Yes!” Relief was overt in her tone this time. “Knock on wood, we still do. And hopefully it stays that way. We’re actually—”
“You can tell me about it later,” Jeremy interrupted with a wince. “We’re actually somewhere without power, and the phone is going to die soon, so I can’t talk very long.”
“Oh, that’s alright, hon,” his mom hurried to say. “I just wanted to know you were okay, Love you!”
“Love you too,” Jeremy said. “Tell Dad for me.”
“I will. Bye-bye.”
He hung up and handed the phone back to Caleb. “Was there anything in the back.”
“Nope,” Caleb shook his head sadly, “Nothing in the fridges. Nothing in the cabinets. Not a speck of flour or a single tub of cream cheese.”
“Damn," Jeremy grumbled. Given the lack of chaos inside the shop, it had probably just been abandoned because they simply could not make bagels anymore. He had been looking forward to a different kind of food.