Jeremy tapped his pen on his notebook as they walked. For all the crazy things that had happened over the past few days, he did not feel like he had recorded very much. He went back through to see if there was anything he could add. In his haste to record the runes from the goblin after it attacked, he’d left bloody fingerprints and a few good sketches. But he did not have a page for the mini-goblins. At this point, he could not remember their runes, or if he even saw any runes on them, so he titled a blank page. They would probably show up again.
He also added his observations of grass and whatever else Caleb pointed out on the page he started while resting in the park. To the page about dragons, he scribbled a note that they were bulletproof and likely breathed fire. Then he flipped to the very second page, where he had begun to record runes. A few were listed out. Only two had labels, ‘fire extinguish’ and ‘summon water.’ He still did not know what the others meant, but there was a way for him to write down some new ones.
“Hey Moira,” He said, “Can you summon a rock again?”
She glanced up from burying her face in Atticus’s fur to annoy her. The cat looked resigned to her fate, splayed awkwardly in Moira’s arms, rather than annoyed. Moira held out a hand, and a rock dropped into her palm. Jeremy watched the rune appear alongside it, then drew it and wrote ‘earth’ beside it.
“Cool, can you summon a flame?”
“You wouldn’t let me do that last time I tried.” Moria pouted.
“Because we were at a gas station.” Jeremy waved his pen at her, “Go on.”
She puffed her cheeks out and snapped her fingers a few times. A flame flickered to life. They stared at it for a split second before she hissed and yanked her hand back. The flame dropped to the sidewalk and sizzled out.
“Burn yourself?” Caleb asked. Moira scrunched her nose at him as she stuck her finger in her mouth. Jeremy scribbled down the runes of the spell. He brought the notebook closer to his face and compared them to the ‘fire extinguish’ spell. Both had two components, one of which was the same. He assumed this meant fire and the other was either ‘summon’ or ‘banish.’ He drew the runes by themselves, labeled them, then looked at the other spells and recognized ‘summon’ in the ones for ‘summon water’ and ‘summon flower.’ He broke them down into their individual components as well.
“Can you summon…air?” His voice lilted up, unsure exactly what that would look like. He frowned and wondered if flowers were some earth magic. Could you summon a rock bigger than a pebble and drop it on someone? So many possibilities to explore. He glanced up to see Moira ignoring him in favor of her phone. “Hey-“
She did not even let him get started, dumping Atticus from her arms and telling him to “Shut up. My friend just sent me this story. Apparently, fucking elves just visited the white house.”
Caleb went to peer over her shoulder, “What kind of elves? Like tall woodland creatures or Santa’s elves?”
Moira made a disgusted face, “If Santa is real, I’m calling it quits.”
“Fair.” Caleb reached over her to scroll on her phone screen, “I wonder if they came through a gate? Are they offering to help us fight the goblins?”
“Maybe they can offer a better way than a nuclear strike,” Jeremy said. “They would be right in time. It’s supposed to hit in…” He grabbed Caleb’s wrist to look at his watch, “Two hours.”
Moira scoffed at them both, “As if those idiots in Washington are going to listen to elves. Are you kidding me? All they’ve been spouting this whole time is how dangerous magic is. How unpredictable these creatures are. It doesn’t matter how pretty the fairy is. It might eat your dog!”
She waved her hands for emphasis, then let them fall to her hips. “Can you imagine the outrage if they suddenly started making decisions based on the input of magical creatures?”
“I mean, it sounds reasonable to me.” Jeremy offered. "To listen to the advice of elves who obviously know more than we do."
“Do you know the elves?” Moira pointed out, “No. They could be here to deliver a declaration of war from an elf army about to come through a gate out in California or something. Who knows?”
Jeremy shook his head and started walking again, “Whatever. I don’t really care what armies attack us. All I know is we need to figure out how to use magic in order to deal with anything. Do you think you can summon air?”
“What the hell would that look like?”
“I don’t know.” Jeremy scratched his hairline with the pen and frowned down at his notes. If there were ways to summon and banish elements, perhaps there were ways to manipulate them when they already existed around you.
“Can you make a little whirlwind of air or something like that?” Jeremy asked instead.
“How come you are making me do all the spells?” Moira crossed her arms. "They tire me out, you know."
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On the other hand, Caleb held his hands out, fingers splayed, and narrowed his eyes at the sidewalk ahead of them. His tongue poked out. He almost tripped over Atticus’s leash in his concentration. But then the scattering of papers and leaves up ahead swirled into a vortex. He gasped and dropped his hands, looking around with dancing eyes.
“Like that?”
“Yeah,” Jeremy looked at the runes floating by the spell. Sure enough, they were new to him. Assuming they followed the same pattern as the runes in the summoning spell, he assigned each a meaning. The first rune he labeled ‘manipulate’ and the second ‘air.’
“I’m having you guys do the spells because I want to copy down the runes as I see them,” Jeremy said, “But I think I have a pretty good basis now. I have four elements and three…actions.”
He flipped the notebook shut and slipped it into his pocket. Other people seemed to visualize what they wanted to happen to cast a spell, but if there was a system of runes as aids for this, spells could be much more streamlined and more straightforward to cast. So far, Jeremy was the only person they encountered who could see any runes, but sharing the knowledge with others would make magic much more accessible. Plus, crafting more complex spells, like doing dishes or protection spells like the ones the goblins used at Gate 0, would become more straightforward.
The pile of papers and leaves had settled back onto the ground as soon as Caleb looked away. So, there also seemed to be a component of concentration required to maintain the manipulated spells. Jeremy furrowed his brow and envisioned the runes to re-create the whirlwind. The runes flashed to life before him, then the papers lifted off the concrete and swirled around.
As they walked along, they continued practicing different spells. Eventually, it grew too tiring to continue to cast as they walked. Jeremy felt like a wrung-out rag. He pulled out the notebook and wrote down how many spells of each kind he had cast on a new page and indicated the date. By that time, they were approaching Uncle Howard’s penthouse.
It was in one of the high rises along the river with sleek mirrored glass sides that reflected the gray sky and other buildings. This side of the city was not cut off from the rest of the world like the side with the university. Once they passed the pileup blocking the bridge over the river, they encountered sparse traffic on the roads. None of the riots had made it over the bridge either. Businesses were still shut down, but their glass fronts remained intact, and the pots of flowers along the sidewalk remained upright.
Jeremy warily eyed a small park as they passed by. It was hardly larger than a block, and he could see through the trees to the buildings on the other side. But smoke clouded the sky and darkened the spaces under the trees. The shadows yawned at him as if they were alive. He saw no runes in them but hardly found that comforting.
“I wonder if that used to be like one tree and a bench.” Caleb said, “Didn’t most parks expand in size? I read that they don’t even know how large Central Park in New York got because they still haven’t explored all of it yet.”
“Isn’t there a gate in Central Park?” Moira said.
“Yeah.” Caleb started veering off the sidewalk onto the grass as though he were trying to go into the park. Jeremy grabbed his bag and steered him back onto the sidewalk. He had a growing mistrust of parks and shadowy spaces, but Caleb just rolled his eyes, then kept talking with Moira, “Some of the worst riots are up there. Can you imagine trying to get New Yorkers to abandon their city?”
Moira hummed. She slowed to a stop and craned her neck to look up the side of the mirrored high rise on the opposite side of the street, “That’s it.”
This building was fancy enough to have a guy operating the elevator, and he had shown up for work that day. Moira greeted him by name as she walked into the elevator. Jeremy and Caleb exchanged a look while they shuffled in behind her. Jeremy stared at his blurry reflection in the doors as the floors dinged by. Atticus shuffled around in her carrier and made a slight noise of complaint. The elevator operator eyed her. Jeremy smiled at him.
They spilled out into the hallway in front of the penthouse door. Moira dug her keys out of her backpack and let them into the apartment. It felt like walking into a castle somewhere in the British Isles or something. The entire place was decked out in high-backed armchairs, plush Persian rugs, and paintings, both portraits and landscapes, in fancy gilded frames. The curtains draped across the massive windows that overlooked the city were velvet with golden trim.
“Jesus,” Caleb said. Jeremy agreed. It was certainly not the trim, minimalism that he usually thought of when he imagined someone’s penthouse. But he did not precisely have a frame of reference, so maybe that was just something he assumed based on movies.
Moira flipped the lights on. An actual chandelier lit up above them. If it weren’t for the TV and the sleek modern appliances visible in the shadowy kitchen, Jeremy would have thought he just stepped back a century.
“My uncle was obsessed with old stuff.” Moira said, “He decorated this place based on their castle in Scotland.”
“He has a castle in Scotland?” Caleb whispered. Moira ignored him in favor of sweeping further into the apartment. Jeremy let his bag slip to the floor and opened the carrier so Atticus could roam around. Then, he followed Moira through the foyer into the open layout of the rest of the apartment. The kitchen was to the side of a dining area that opened into a less formal TV room on one side and a family room with all the high-backed chairs on the other. Moira headed for a hallway beyond them.
“My Aunt’s not so into all the old stuff like him.” Moira said, “Collecting antiques and scouring the world for historical books. She was more interested in the jewelry line she started selling online a few years ago. The pandemic inspired her, you know?”
“I guess.” Jeremy glanced up the sweeping marble staircase that led to a loft. An empty wine glass sat on the coffee table in the TV room. It had a bright red lip stain along the rim. Jeremy shuddered. A newspaper was opened to the business pages, folded over the arm of one of the high-backed chairs beside the fireplace in the living room like Uncle Howard left it there so he could continue reading when they got home. After sacrificing his niece and a random guy, she brought to a party to some old god. He shook his head.
“Here’s his office.” Moira announced, pointing to a door, “I don’t have the key for that.”
“You said they are dead, right?” Caleb came to a stop behind them.
“Yeah.” Jeremy gave him an unimpressed look, sure by his expression that he thought he had just come up with a brilliant idea. Even Moira looked a little wary.
“Out of the way.” Caleb swept his arms wide to push them away, then rubbed his hands together and backed up a few steps. He hopped on the balls of his feet a few times, rolled his shoulders, and kicked the door down.