“You're sure you want to come with us?”
“Yes.” No edge of lost patience found its way into Zanie’s tone even though she’d answered the same question for Jeremy several times. “I’d much rather go out and see what is happening than watch it on TV. And, as we found out when my entire street got flooded, there's danger whether or not I sit at home.”
“True.”
“And I have a feeling that things are only going to get worse," she continued. “It’s barely been a week, and there are more monsters than ever. My brother’s at home with my parents, so they will be fine, but I want to learn to defend myself against this stuff.”
“That’s fair.” Jeremy kicked a pebble down the road. They were making their way down one of the freeways out of the city. The military had not blocked this one off for ease of transport, so it had become congested with accidents and traffic. Abandoned cars lined the length of it. This, more than anything else, gave Jeremy the feeling that they were really living in the apocalypse.
The hospital was a few hours behind them now. After taking a decent nap in the hallway outside Derek’s room, the three of them had taken their leave. Moira had still been asleep in the armchair by Derek’s bed when they left and Jeremy did not wake her. Goodbyes were always awkward, and they planned to stay in touch anyway. It felt strange to walk down the apocalyptic street without her.
“Do you know how to fight at all?” Caleb hopped down from the roof of a car onto its hood. His boots banged against the metal as he stomped around. Instead of walking along the median like a sane person, he’d taken to jumping from car to car.
“I’ve taken self-defense classes,” Zanie squinted up at him.
“Good, because we are literally going to find some monsters to fight,” Caleb reminded her. “We’re hunting!”
“I know. Isn’t that why we are practicing spells?”
“Right.” Caleb climbed onto the top of a jeep, “It’s been about thirty minutes. I’d say we can practice again. Hit me with something.”
Jeremy stooped to pick up a rough chunk of asphalt. He held a hand in front of his eyes to block out the sun. As they got further from the city, the constant smoky gloom dissipated into more of a glaring haze. Caleb grinned at him, fists propped on his hips like he knew he was standing with the sun directly at his back. The bastard. Jeremy chucked the rock at him.
Caleb closed his eyes and scrunched up his face, but nothing happened. The rock struck him right in the chest. He yelped and rubbed the spot, then deflated. Thus far, all his attempts to stop an object flying at him or move something with his mind have been met with variable success. Mostly failures. But he succeeded more than Zanie or Jeremy, who failed one hundred percent of the time when they tried to stop a pebble in mid-air.
“Try a barrier this time.” Jeremy scooped up and handful of gravel and started chucking the little rocks at Caleb. He furrowed his brow and held out his hands. A few pebbles pelted past them, but the rest stopped short inches from his palms and fell to the roof of the Jeep with a clatter. The barrier was not visible. There was not even a shimmer of magic in the air to indicate a shield had been created. But Jeremy could see the runes of the spell plastered across the air. He watched them fade. They included the rune for manipulation and one that he was unfamiliar with. He chewed on his lip, then passed the palmful of pebbles to Zanie.
“Go crazy,” he told her while he dropped his duffle from his shoulder and knelt to unzip it. Zanie started tossing the pebbles at Caleb while he concentrated on maintaining the barrier. The ancient book still sat nestled among the clothes in the duffle, safely secured in the gallon-sized zip-lock bag. Jeremy popped the bag open and started turning the pages of the book.
“What’s that?” Zanie asked.
“It’s a book that I managed to smuggle from the council.” Jeremy stopped on a page pretty close to the beginning. It listed what he assumed were runes for the basic types of magic, or at least elemental magic. He was familiar with the ones for fire, wind, earth, and water. The others listed included the one present in all the healing spells, but he was not sure what they stood for yet. The rune from the barrier was not among them. He scratched his cheek with the nail of his thumb.
“You’re getting a little scruffy there, my dude.” Caleb hopped down from the Jeep and joined them, “You stole a book from the council? That’s awesome.”
“The runes in it are actually the runes that I see, so I figured it might be useful.” Jeremy glanced up at them, “Only problem is that it’s all in a different language.”
“So, it’s like a spell book?” Zanie held her hands out. Jeremy hesitated for a moment before handing it to her. She gingerly turned a page. “Like a Book of Shadows?”
“What is a Book of Shadows?” Caleb asked.
“It’s a spell book, Zanie told him with a completely straight face. Caleb inhaled but chose not to say anything, blowing the breath back out in a short little snort. Zanie smiled at him. “One that is used by witches. A grimoire.”
“It's kind of like that, I guess.” Jeremy took the book back when she handed it to him. He kept flipping through the pages to look for the rune on the barrier. Finally, he found it as a part of a larger spell. In this one, he recognized the rune for fire, the two that make up the barrier rune, and the rune for air.
He hummed and tapped his finger against the spell for a few moments. Then he looked them over again, committing them to memory, and set to book down.
"Are we taking a break?" Zanie asked as Jeremy walked a few steps away from their bags and turned toward the empty, grassy median.
"Sure," Jeremy wiped a bead of sweat from his temple before it could drip into his eye, then squinted into the air. Heat rippled off the asphalt and cars. The air around him shimmered, but there was nothing magical about that. Then, he envisioned the spell runes and watched in wonder as they materialized.
He knew his ability to see magic was pretty neat, but he'd begun to appreciate it over the past couple of hours practicing spell work. It was incredible to actually watch the spell take place rather than rely on hand-wavy, belief-based spell casting like others.
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
Jeremy gazed at the runes as they hung in the air. Then, a blast of heat blew him back a step. He threw up his hands to protect his face, eyes squeezing shut. All he saw before they closed was a bright burst of blue.
The overwhelming heat passed, leaving him feeling a little singed as he lowered his hands and opened his eyes. Before him lay a scorched spot in the grassy median. A few little fires burned along the edges, bright blue and growing stronger as they spread through the sunbaked, dry, brittle grass.
"Holy shit!" Zanie choked on a mouthful of granola bar and started coughing. She fumbled with the foil wrapping to fold it over the bar and stuff it into her pocket as she jogged over. Caleb looked on from his perch on top of the Jeep.
"What the hell was that?" He called over.
Jeremy shook his head. He concentrated on putting out the spreading blue flames. But after only two of the little fire-extinguishing spells, a wave of exhaustion rolled over him so heavily that he almost dropped to his knees.
"Oh man," he put his hands on his knees and hung his head, "That spell took it out of me. Oof. Zanie, could you put out the rest of those fires?"
"Yep," She wheezed as she smacked her palm against her chest while trying to catch her breath after all that coughing. The fires began to dissipate under her attention. Little runes flashed with each spell as the flames went out without even a puff of smoke.
Jeremy straightened up and stretched his neck from side to side. Big, explosive blue fire spells were not the most brilliant idea when they were in the middle of a drought. And casting more complex spells like that was too exhausting while they were out of the road for now. All he wanted to do was lie down in the ditch on the side of the road and sleep for an eternity. He tilted his face toward the sky and sighed. Then got a face full of water.
"Whoops!" Caleb shouted, "I was aiming for the fire."
Jeremy wiped his eyes off and glared over at Caleb. He was grinning from ear to ear, not looking very sorry at all. The water felt great. It was a cool relief from the muggy summer heat and the leftover singed feeling from the blue fire. He wasn't upset at all, but he played along like he was. He stooped down to pick up a piece of gravel and chuck it at Caleb.
“Bastard." Jeremy chuckled. Caleb's eyes widened. He threw up his hands as the rock flew toward him. It disappeared from the air mid-arc. Caleb’s eyes bulged out of his head in shock. He had not managed to make an object disappear from mid-air before.
“Well, that's new.” Zanie finished putting out the flames and stood beside Jeremy. She gathered her hair in her hands, wiping away the strands plastered to her temples by sweat and lifting it from the back of her neck. Jeremy's eyes tracked the movement, and then he turned back to ask Caleb what he'd done differently this time.
Before he could say anything, Caleb’s hands flew to his throat. His head jerked back with a few strange motions. Then he stumbled to the edge of the Jeep’s roof and clattered down to the ground. It was incredible that he managed not to put a foot or elbow through one of the windows in his uncoordinated descent. His entire body swayed when his boots hit the pavement, and he slumped to his knees against the Jeep’s tire.
“You okay?” Jeremy barked, closing the few feet between them. Without all the flailing around, it became apparent that Caleb was choking for real. His lips pursed like a goldfish, silently trying and failing to suck in air. His cheeks flushed bright, blotchy red, and his eyes were wide and wild. He pitched forward and started slapping the asphalt with his palm.
“Is he choking on something?” Zanie’s voice climbed a few octaves. Her hands fluttered around Caleb’s bowed figure, wanting to help but unsure what to do. Caleb had not been eating. He was not even chewing gum.
“Here,” Jeremy grabbed Caleb’s shoulder and grunted as he hauled him back up, “Help me hold him for a second.”
Caleb was not a cooperative patient. He was not blue in the face yet, but his coordination was deteriorating. Combined with the panic of being unable to breathe, that meant he kept trying to flail and flop away. Zanie huffed and busied herself with grabbing his arms and helping Jeremy support his weight.
They pulled him far enough away from the tire for Jeremy to get behind him. A few hearty slaps to his back did nothing. Jeremy had never trained in first aid or anything, but he'd seen posters about how to help a choking person and watched enough TV to have some idea of what to do. So, he wrapped his arms around Caleb’s middle and pulled his fist sharply up below his ribs. After a few repetitions of that, something came flying out of Caleb’s mouth.
He sucked in a huge breath and pitched out of Jeremy’s arms to fold over and cough into his knees. Zanie scooted back a few feet and crouched over the object that lay in a little shiny smear of Caleb’s saliva.
“What is it?” Jeremy asked.
She tilted her head and leaned a little closer. “A rock.”
“A rock?”
“Yeah, a rock.” She poked it with her finger, then made a face and wiped it off on her thigh, “It looks like one of the pieces of gravel you were throwing at him. You don’t think -”
She glanced up at Jeremy with horror dawning across her features. “You don’t think the rock that disappeared just now ended up lodged in his throat?"
It was the logical conclusion. Jeremy’s face tightened up in a pained expression. That sounded horrible. He gave Caleb a few more smacks to his back, right between his shoulder blades. They unbalanced him, so he ended up tipping over in a sprawl to one side. He made a horrid, scratchy noise from deep in his throat and wiped his mouth with the back of his wrist.
“That was awful.”
“Did you teleport a rock from mid-air into your esophagus?” Jeremy demanded.
“A rock?” Caleb roughly exclaimed. He glanced at the pebble in question and his eyes rolled toward the sky as he let out a breathless chuckle, “Felt more like a sea urchin was lodged in there."
"You definitely teleported a rock into your esophagus," Jeremy concluded. "What the hell were you thinking about for the spell to go off like that?"
“Nothing different than the other times. I guess if healing spells can backfire, it makes sense that any other spells could too.” Caleb cleared his throat and wiped away the wayward tears that had streamed from the corners of his eyes. He gave a few more weak coughs. Then he shrugged.
Jeremy gaped at him. “You are just going to shrug it off? What if we hadn’t been here?”
“It’s a good thing I already decided that it’s a smart idea to stick to the buddy system with the apocalypse going on and all.” Caleb grimaced at the little bits of asphalt embedded into his palm from when he kept smacking the ground. He wiped them on his jacket and sighed, “It’s not like I’m going to stop practicing. The nurses said the chances of backfiring decreased the more they practiced.”
“What if you teleport it into someone's heart or an artery or something next time?” Zanie shuddered.
“What the fuck? Don’t put images like that into my head.” Caleb groused at her. He shoved Jeremy by the shoulder, pushing down on it to give himself leverage to climb to his feet. He swayed a little and rolled his head around, Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallowed a few times.
“It also seemed like people with professional medical training already were less likely to face a backfire.” Jeremy scrambled to his feet and jogged over to his bag. “We need more information about what exactly the spell you are casting means.”
“Have you been able to see the runes?” Caleb trailed after him.
“Yes, but I don’t recognize some of them.” Jeremy picked up the book and started flipping through it again. This time, he looked for any runes that looked like the ones that appeared around Caleb’s hands whenever he tried to do his telekinesis. They often showed up even if the spell did not go off successfully, which Jeremy assumed was a more benign version of the spell misfiring.
“Here,” He poked a finger at the book. “That is one of them.”
Caleb and Zanie peered over his shoulder. Jeremy flipped a few more pages. Most of the spells for several pages included the rune as if the entire section revolved around it.
“Caleb, I’m going to have you cast a bunch of these spells since Zanie and I aren’t able to do this kind of magic. Once we figure out what they all do, we might get an idea of what the rune means."
“Nice.” Caleb cleared his throat, fighting off the feeling of the rock lodged in his throat. He still looked vaguely congested, although his face was returning to a normal color. “We can start translating the book like that.”
Jeremy nodded, “I need a new notebook.”