Jeremy was about to call it and say they should move onto the next town. If there was no power here, there was no use in hanging around. They could do a little exploring to see if the might be able to find what smashed up the end of the building, but that could have happened weeks ago for all he knew. He frowned at the cars in the parking lot. Maybe they had simply been abandoned when the building was attacked, and the bagel shop had later been looted for food.
He wondered if they could get the cash register open and see if there was anything left in it, then shook his head at himself in disappointment. Just because the place seemed abandoned, and the world was turned on its head did not mean that he could start looting an stealing. If he planned to continue using money and it continued having value, then he needed to earn it.
“Hey, do you think there’s any cash in the register?” Caleb asked, obviously thinking along the same lines as him. Jeremy opened his mouth to tell him off, but Zanie beat him to it.
“If they cleaned the place out of food, I doubt there’s any cash left,” she said.
“But maybe they were only thinking about how hungry they were, not really worrying about money since it’s basically the apocalypse.” Caleb argued, walking around the counter.
“My guess is that the place was cleaned out by the owners, since it’s still so neat,” Zanie posited. “I doubt they would have left a full register.”
Just then, the lights flicked on. Jeremy gasped and glanced around, eyes landing on Hazel who stood in one corner with his hand still lingering on the light switch, raising his eyebrows at everybody.
“Are you kidding,” Zanie chuckled.
Jeremy whipped his chin down to stare at the fridge, which remained completely silent. He rolled it out from the wall a bit and saw that it was unplugged from the wall. With a groan, he rubbed a hand over his face and tried not to laugh at himself.
“Well, this is a good thing,” Zanie plopped her bookbag down on the floor and began unzipping it to draw out her laptop. Hazel took his hand off the light switch and went over to the window to look out over the parking lot, while Zanie hummed to herself and started running a charging cord from one of the outlets to a table where she sat down and started click clacking on the keyboard, transferring the newsletter she had begun to work up with her phone while they were on the move, so she could polish it.
Jeremy glanced at Caleb, who was rubbing his chin and leaning back to consider the cash register still. “Come on,” he prompted him, “Let’s get all the phones set up so they can charge.”
They pulled out various power banks and plugged them in, as well, using up nearly every power cord they had. By the time they were finished, almost all the outlets were used up as well. Four power banks with they had picked up along the way, the tablet, and Zanie, Caleb, and Hazel’s phones lay scattered around on the tables, bench seats, and floors beside the various outlets.
“So,” Caleb said, tone light and teasing as he looked around the room, “You are okay with stealing their electricity, but not their money?”
Jeremy rolled his eyes.
He glanced over at Hazel, who was still gazing out the window and caught sight of someone walking toward one of the cars in the parking lot.
“Do they even have wifi?” Caleb asked Zanie, going over to peer at the laptop screen from behind her shoulder.
“Sure do,” she nodded. “Can you look around for the password?”
Jeremy thought it was fascinating that there was still wifi in this abandoned cafe despite everything going on. He guessed the owners had not stopped paying the bill quite yet. Or they were still in their last month. If they took the time to clean out all the food, even unplugging the refrigerator, he assumed they would be the type to cancel their internet bill and clean up any loose ends. Strange that the door was left unlocked and the open sign on.
“Right here!” Caleb triumphantly held up a little chalkboard about the size of his forearm with the password scrawled across it in elegant calligraphy. He placed it on the table beside Zanie’s laptop and she nodded her head in thanks.
Jeremy watched the car pull out of the parking lot, stopping at the road to put on their blinker and look both ways, then pull out into the nonexistent traffic and come to a stop a a red light a few blocks away.
Hazel turned away from the window and gestured out the door. “There appears to be an active doctor’s office over there.”
Jeremy hummed in acknowledgement. It made sense for there to be an active doctors office. Maybe before they moved on from this place they should pop in and see if anyone knew what had caused the destruction at the end of the building. In the meantime, he wandered into the back and poked around.
It was about how Caleb described it, eerily empty in that way of liminal spaces. There should be the smell of fresh bread and people bustling about, but there was nothing but silent sunlight streaming in through the windows to glare against the empty stainless-steel counters and tables. He stuck his nose into all the cabinets, feeling a little excited when he opened one beneath a counter to find a bunch of plain wooden plaques in different shapes and sizes like the ones sold at a craft store. Beside them, haphazardly stored in a cardboard box, was a wood burner. He plucked them both out of the cabinet and went out front.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
“Hazel how quickly would the scan enchantment degrade wood?” he asked, setting the materials down on one of the tables beside the only available outlet left.
“Well, it depends on the type and quality of the wood, I would suppose.” He came over to sit beside Jeremy and peered curiously at his stack of wooden plaques. They looked like maybe they were used to label things in the display case or something and were certainly not large enough to support the full enchantment, especially with crystals included, but might work for practice.
“It’s not going to just immediately break down because it’s wood though, right?” Jeremy got a little more specific. He really needed to learn to fashion his questions for Hazel with maximum specificity. “The time I tried in the barn was because of my inexperience with enchanting, not because of the material. Like I should be able to get the enchantment off successfully at least once, right?"
Hazel pursed his lips. “It could have been a little bit of both.” Then, at Jeremys groan of frustration, he added, “Why don’t you try it again and find out?”
The worst thing that could happen would be that he needed to throw the enchanted plaque into the center of the room, where there were no electronics for it to consume if it did go wrong. Jeremy shrugged and plugged the wood burner into the wall, then set it up to let it get hot.
“What do you think of this?” Zanie unplugged her laptop and brought it over, turning it around to show Jeremy the newsletter she had finished putting together. It was essentially two pages, with one going over the basics of spellcasting, explaining the mechanisms of conjuring and manipulating elements while giving the runes for each. It then gave the four basic elements and encouraged people to practice summoning and manipulating them.
The second page included the scan spell, with the disclaimer that it should not be attempted until a person had an excellent grasp of the basic spells and had practiced to the point of being able to cast at least fifteen of them in succession without exhausting themselves. Jeremy figured that was a good way to make sure they were at least halfway through to their first ring in terms of mana efficiency, otherwise they would be unlikely to get the scan spell to go off or might face dire consequences if they did. It was possible to drain your mana and exhaust yourself to the point of death, according to Hazel. And if the scan spell did misfire as it was cast, it could theoretically become that creeping hungry maw that ate all the energy around it, include people’s life energy. The disclaimer put both of those warnings in clear wording.
The scan spell they included was a basic iteration, with only the rings and the overlay colors, both translated into simple numbers, included. There was a note at the end that additions were likely to follow which would allow people to see their attributes and that there would be an enchantment soon to come which would allow people to cast it at any level, even beginner, and be able to track their progress.
“I should still come up with an app for the people who won’t be able to access your enchantments,” Zanie pointed to the portion of the newsletter talking about tracking progress. “And are you going to work something into the enchantment that will allow people to access the data and see their progress?”
Jeremy cursed under his breath and pulled out his notebook to add yet another addition to the scan enchantment that he eventually wanted to create. That could probably be a separate enchantment, though, but it would have to be on the same piece of material unless he made it so that the crystal could easily be removed and put into a separate piece of metal or whatever the ended up using with had the enchantment to create a readout from the stored data.
Ideas for the future.
“Actually, for now, how about you don’t say anything about tracking the progress,” Jeremy suggested. “Because that’s a whole level of complication that I eventually want to get to, but maybe we should just keep what we tell people simple for now. Just saying that it would make it more accessible for beginners works, especially since we have the warning about not using the raw spell as a beginner.”
“Okay,” Zanie shrugged, “We’ll put a pin in that then.”
She turned the laptop around and went back over to her table to sit down and adjust.
“And maybe add something about how the enchantment would take up far less mana, which would make it useful for scanning enemies, since the spell would just drain people right before a fight.” He paused and tapped his fingers on the table. “And maybe we should add the fact that it will drain people before a fight to the disclaimer.”
She nodded; eyes fixed on the screen.
The other part of the newsletter was an advertisement for the Adventurer’s Guild. Moira had discussed it over with Zanie earlier when they had her on the phone, so Jeremy trusted that whatever was on that part of the newsletter was already figured out. Keeping track of the progress was a great idea and he thought it was definitely useful, but the fact that he had not thought about making a mechanism for people to actually see that progress, meant he needed to flesh the idea out far more.
But an app would probably work in the meantime or in concert. Zanie had made a good point. He glanced over at her typing away on her laptop with a little furrow in her brow.
“Hey,” he said, “The newsletter looks really good. Like the way you formatted it an everything is professional and looks nice.”
“Thanks,” her eyes flicked up and she smiled at him. “Design isn’t really my thing, but I know a little bit.”
“Well, I also think that it is a good idea to make that app,” he continued. “Maybe once we reach my parent’s you’ll have the time to actually sit down and work on it.”
“That’s more up my alley.” She grinned at him, eyes dropping back down to her screen as she said, “I’ll have plenty of time to plan out how I’m going to do it as we walk.”
“I’m still for trying to find a car at some point.” Caleb volunteered his opinion on walking literally any time anyone ever brought it up. Jeremy shook his head. The acrid scent of hot metal was permeating the air, which meant that the wood burner was ready. He hesitated for a moment, trying to decide whether to practice more fire starter enchantments or try the simplified scan enchantment. He’d gotten proficient at the fire starters, though, so he decided to try his hand at the scan enchantment again.