Mrs. Jennings was groggy when she woke up. The three of them had already woken and set all their things by the door, ready to go whenever she got up but unwilling to wake her when it had probably been the best night of rest she’d gotten in almost two weeks now. She came down the steps still dressed in her pajamas, with sleeping in her eyes, and beamed at them.
“I slept through the night, which I assume means you took care of the problem,” she said after telling them good morning. Jeremy explained to her what he and Caleb had seen and how they burned the feather. He’d also checked in the basement this morning, and there was no sign of the dungeon reappearing.
“I know you said you needed to be on your way, but let me make you some breakfast.” She opened the fridge and pulled out the carton of eggs. “And you’ll need a reward, won’t you.”
She set the eggs aside and turned on the stove to heat up a pan. In the meantime, she reached for the cabinet above the fridge and pulled down a ceramic cookie jar. They watched in amazement as she pulled out a plethora of fat while envelopes, reading the labels on each one and setting them aside until she found the right one.
“Here you are.” She put one down in the center of the table, and they all leaned over to peer at the label, which was actually illegible. “There’s nine hundred in there. One hundred for each night and another for actually taking care of the problem…for each of you.”
“Uh…”
“That’s a lot,” Zanie exclaimed, picking up the envelope to thumb through the bills. “We mostly just slept, though.”
“It’s a rainy day fund.” Mrs. Jennings flapped her hand at them dismissively. “It’s just collecting dust here.”
She sliced off a pat of butter and tapped it into the pan, where it melted and sizzled.
“Well, thank you,” Caleb said. Zanie doled out the bills evenly, and they tucked them away, not willing to protest twice and make things awkward. Plus, they could really use the money. If this was how much people were willing to pay to have dungeons cleared and monsters taken care of, Jeremy had just found a new profession.
“Where are you all headed now?” Mrs. Jennings asked.
Zanie, who had been at the sink washing her hands after touching the money, took the bowl as soon as Mrs. Jennings finished cracking eggs into it and started whisking. “We were heading west, just in general toward the mountains, to do some camping.”
Mrs. Jennings made a face. “They say that wilderness areas are dangerous and are trying to keep people out. Even some city parks are blockaded off.”
“We were hoping to find some dungeons and monsters to practice fighting,” Caleb said. “And to practice some spells that we don’t want to do around a lot of people.”
“But we found a dungeon inside a house, right.” Zanie paused, whisking to make her argument. “There’s no need for us to go out camping if we can find dungeons in people’s houses. We just have to ask around and figure out where there are monsters.”
“That’s true.” Caleb glanced at Jeremy, who just shrugged.
“Where are all of your families?” Mrs. Jennings asked.
“They’re all safe,” Jeremy said. “How about your kids? How are they doing with all this?”
“Annoyed that my grandkids aren’t going to school, so they are home.” Mrs. Jennings sighed. “I wish they lived closer because I would love to help out.”
Jeremy tapped his fingers on the table and looked at her wistful expression. Another sizzle filled the room as Zanie dumped the eggs into the pan. It faded into the sound of her scraping them around with a spatula.
“We could always head towards your parent’s place, Jer,” Caleb suggested.
Mrs. Jennings jumped on that immediately. “I think that is a great idea. I’m sure your parents would love to see you.”
They probably would since Jeremy has not been as consistent about calling them as he promised himself he would be.
“I’m sure we’ll pass a park big enough to test that spell you found and some of the others from the book without an issue,” Caleb argued.
“Yeah, alright,” he said. “We can head in that direction and see what we run into on the way. It’ll probably be a few days' walk.”
That raised the question of why they did not have a car, which led to them explaining the state of the roads to Mrs. Jennings, who’d only been around her own town, which hadn’t experienced any traffic so terrible it had yet to be cleared. She’d heard about it on the news a little, but other things had been taking precedence over the morning commute traffic report lately.
They finished breakfast, got Mrs. Jenning’s contact info, and told her to call them if the dungeon ever showed back up. Then they gathered their things and bade her goodbye. Once they were out on the street in front of her house, Jeremy had to admit that he had no idea where they were. He could backtrack to the highway and figure it out, but that seemed like a waste.
“Caleb?” he asked.
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Caleb shifted the strap of the gym bag slung over his shoulder and muttered something about carrying too much stuff around, then nodded to their left. “That way.”
They fell into step with him, going back in the direction from which they had come a couple of days ago. They passed the playground, which was empty at this hour in the morning. Caleb started whistling.
“Hey, Zanie,” Jeremy said. “Do you have that crystal we found?”
“Sure,” She shrugged her backpack off one shoulder and rooted around in the front pocket until she came up with it. A little piece of the dirty lint always collects in the bottom of backpack pockets clung to it, which she brushed off before handing it over.
Jeremy placed it in the palm of his hand, where it sat among the lines in his skin and looked perfectly normal. Like a small piece of quartz that could be wrapped in wire and worn as a necklace or an earring the way he saw girls do sometimes.
“Anything to it?” Zanie asked.
“Nope. Just looks like a regular rock.” He tossed it in the air and caught it, then threw it over to Zanie, who held her hand up for it. She looked a bit put out.
“It’s the perfect size for a pendant.” Zanie held it up to watch the way it caught the sunlight. “Maybe I’ll make a necklace with it.”
“I wonder what determines the type of monster a dungeon puts out and if that has any connection to the reward,” Caleb mused. “We should try out the spell that you got.”
“We could find a park.” Jeremy glanced around and caught sight of the playground disappearing in the distance. “There’s got to be a bigger park around somewhere.”
“The State Park we just came from is kind of the resident wilderness area,” Caleb said.
“I don’t know what direction we’re heading in, but the highway we walked here on seemed pretty deserted,” Zanie suggested.
Caleb snapped his fingers and made finger guns at her. They were not heading back the way they came, but they were going to end up on the highway again for a little while. It popped up before they even found an exit, Caleb’s uncanny skills for navigation leading him to drag them off the roads and through a couple of neighborhoods as the crow flew to reach the towering concrete sound barrier. They were definitely not going to be able to scale, so they had to follow it until there was an entrance ramp anyway. It was blockaded with big orange ‘road closed’ signs because this was the one the military had reserved for quick travel.
Just to be extra safe, they walked along until the sound barriers protecting the suburbs of the town gave way to open stretches of trees on either side of the road. Because the road was closed, there were no cars, and Jeremy made sure to check both ways as far as he could see to ensure no military vehicles were ambling along. Coast clear, he dropped his bags from his shoulders and pulled out the spell scroll.
“All right.” He held it up in front of the open stretch of road while Caleb and Zanie got behind him to peer over his shoulder. “Here goes nothing.”
And it really was nothing. He cast the spell, staring hard at the scroll because there was no way he could memorize and visualize the scripts it included, and watched as the runes lifted from the page like a heat ripple off sunbaked asphalt, only for nothing to happen.
“Go on, do it.” Caleb urged.
“I did.” Jeremy dropped the scroll to his side. He knew he had because his limbs felt heavier from the drag of sudden exhaustion that came from casting more complex spells. “Maybe a misfire? It’s pretty complicated, so maybe it’ll be hard for me at my level to actually cast it.”
“That would be dumb,” Caleb grumbled. “In video games, the loot is always leveled to match your player.”
Jeremy thought it was not necessary to point out that this was not a video game. Also, the dungeon had a whole ring that he did not have, and it wasn’t like he’d cleared the place all by himself. He’d had plenty of help. He lifted the scroll and shrugged. “Let me try one more time.”
Again, nothing happened. He frowned at the scroll, disappointed. Now, he felt like he wanted to lie down right on the asphalt and take a nap. Nothing had ever looked so comfortable to him ever before in his entire life. Zanie sighed and rounded his side to stand next to him and stare off into the unimpressive nothing that the spell had caused. Except he caught a flash of color as she moved.
He’d gotten used to seeing the overlays to the point that he did not really notice them unless he focused. So, her orange overlay was not what snagged his attention by dancing in his periphery; no, it was an entirely different visual cue. He turned and stared straight at her.
“You look like the output from an infrared camera,” he told her.
She looked down at herself in surprise, arms coming up and hands twisting back and forth. “What?”
It really did look like an infrared video, except without the dark background. She was a blob of yellow at her core that faded out into reds and yellows, a little bit of pink and purple at the edges and around her arms. Jeremy spun and looked at Caleb, who appeared the same way. He whipped his head around to look for Atticus and found that she also looked like a little red and yellow blob. Then, it began to fade, and within a few seconds, they returned to normal.
“It’s like an infrared camera.” He shook the spell. “I can’t cast it again without passing out. One of you try it.”
Zanie snatched the scroll up and stared at it, eyes flicking toward them beneath her furrowed brows. Jeremy watched the runes come alive and her eyes widen.
“It is!” She blinked rapidly, “That’s so cool. I wonder if it’s like a real infrared, where you can see through stuff. This could be really useful.”
Caleb dropped his bags and sprinted over to the line of trees a couple of meters off the side of the road. “Can you still see me through the tree?”
“No,” Zanie called back, “It disappeared. But I can still see Jeremy’s…oops, now I can’t. It just disappeared.”
“There must be a distance component to it.” Jeremy sank into a crouch and felt slightly better just being closer to the ground. Standing nearly six feet tall had been making him a bit dizzy. He rubbed his fingers over his forehead and closed his eyes. “Maybe the distance will improve if we practice it. Don’t cast it again, Zanie. Go give it to Caleb and have him cast it, and then he can test if he can see you through a tree up close.”
She followed Caleb over to the trees, and they waffled about testing the spell while Jeremy listened with his eyes closed, just resting them.
“I can see her through the tree,” Caleb reported, “I can also see the tree, I guess cause it’s alive. Makes sense it would have some ambient heat. Seems like…” Jeremy heard the crunching of leaves and sticks underfoot and opened his eyes briefly to watch Caleb backing up several steps, “…around this is the distance in which it works.”
He stood about ten feet from the tree Zanie huddled behind, her arms straight by her side and posture drawn up to try to fit behind its trunk.
“And it’s gone, so that lasted about thirty seconds?” Caleb said. “Maybe that would improve with practice. Cool man!” He came bounding over and gave the scroll back to Jeremy. “It’s a spell that senses life. Life sense spell.”
“Do you need to stop and rest for a while?” Zanie joined them.
“Not in the middle of the road that we aren’t really supposed to be on.” Jeremy groaned and pushed back up to his feet. He put a hand on Caleb’s shoulder to steady himself and rubbed his fingers into his eyes. “But maybe we could concentrate on finding a spot to take a nap?”
“Say no more.” Caleb picked up his bags and one of Jeremy’s to sling over his shoulder then pointed off into the trees. “Let’s go that way.”