When he came to, the ground was lumpy and hard beneath his back, and the trees swayed dizzily overhead. He groaned and lifted a hand to rub his eyes, the realized it was quiet and shot up onto one elbow to look around. The first thing he noticed was the massive carcass of the creature. Its mouth yawned open, blackened, and charred; nearly half of the neck split apart so that it lay off to the side of the body at an angle. It was completely still, no longer even oozing blood, as though it had been there for some time.
The next thing he noticed was that Caleb lay on the ground not too far away, face turned away, completely still. Jeremy held his breath until he saw the rise and fall of his chest.
“Both of you passed out.”
He rolled his head to the other side to see Zanie sitting with her back to a tree, forearms resting on her knees, covered in dull red blood. Her overlay was now a solid green color. Jeremy dropped his chin to look at his own and saw that it was teal now and looked over at Caleb’s to see his had tipped into a real blue.
“What happened?” He rubbed his fingers over his eyes.
“Well, you threw the fire spell, then passed out,” Zanie said. “Caleb threw a couple of these spells that just,” she held her hands together, then snapped them apart, “split its neck apart. I don’t know. He got three off and then passed out. It was pretty much dead by then but still writhing around on the ground, so I got in there with this,” she lifted the dragon scale he had given her, “and finished it off.”
That explained where all the blood came from.
“I’ve got to figure out some type of magic that works for me because I sure as hell don’t want to get that up close and personal again.” She dropped the scale, and it bounced off the leaves by her foot.
Jeremy pushed himself up to his elbows and stared at the trees, knocking back and forth overhead. He glanced over at Caleb. “We have to be close to the edge of these woods, right? I mean, we already walked for like fifteen minutes, and it’s just a stretch of trees along the edge of the highway, right?”
“No clue.” She looked around.
“We shouldn’t have gone into the woods.” Jeremy fell back with a huff. “Should have stuck to the highway. Jeez, I don’t even know if I can stand.”
“Why do you think that thing was trying to bring down the tree?” Zanie asked, eyes on the tipped stem.
“Dunno.” Jeremy closed his eyes. “So doing too many spells makes us pass out. I wonder if you could kill yourself if you drain your mana too far?”
He heard leaves shuffling and looked up to see Zanie getting to her feet. She gave the body of the creature a wide berth and went toward the leaning tree. Jeremy rolled onto his side, pushed up on his arms, and stood slowly. The world did not spin around him, but his legs felt weak beneath him. He frowned at the body of the creature, its strange legs and coarse hair.
“How long were we passed out?” He called after Zanie.
“About thirty minutes, I’d say.” She shouted over her shoulder. He walked a little closer to the creature’s body and inspected the deep slice in its neck. Aside from a small portion of flesh at the very inside of the cut that tore as the body fell, it was perfectly clean, like when a wire cut through clay. He heard the leaves rustle as Caleb moved.
“Did we kill it?”
Jeremy looked over to see Caleb peering up at him, propped up on his elbows, leaves sticking out of his hair. “Zanie finished it off. What the hell spell did you use to split it’s neck apart.”
“One I found in that book and tried out.” Caleb palmed his face. “It like…expands space, I guess? Literally adds space between two things, so it splits something apart if you do it in the middle.”
“That’s crazy.” Jeremy stepped away from the gore of the creature’s body and went to sit beside Caleb. “How are you feeling?”
“Like I slept way too long.” Caleb flopped back down. “You know when you sleep way too long and you feel off because of it?”
“Yeah.”
Zanie came back over and stood over them. “Nothing unusual about the tree from what I could see. Maybe you could go see if it has an overlay?”
“Okay.” Jeremy put out a hand, and she hauled him to his feet. Then they both helped Caleb up, and all wandered over to the tree. Jeremy did not know much about the botany of trees, but he figured having the majority of its roots tipped out of the ground would be enough to kill it. Were it not lying against another tree, it would have fallen all the way to the ground. Sure enough, unlike all of the trees standing around it that had red overlays, it had none.
“It’s dead,” Jermey said. “Or dead enough to not have an overlay anymore. Maybe it was a higher level than the rest of the trees, turning into a dryad or something?”
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“Have you ever heard of anything like that creature?” Caleb asked. “I mean, it knew how to use magic, so it had to be at least somewhat intelligent.”
“Maybe.” Zanie shrugged. “But it’s not like basic magic, like throwing a barrier up is all that difficult. It’s just intention, right? Visualization sometimes. If it wanted the bullets to stop hitting it and was high enough level, it’s no surprise that a barrier might appear. I mean, lots of animals use tools and stuff, so why not magic.”
She had a point. If humans could figure out magic through trial and error like most people currently were, there was no reason animals could not either. Jeremy rubbed his forehead as he imagined a world with deer putting up barriers to stop bullets of hunters from reaching them. Nearby, a branch crashed out of a tree and split into two as it slammed against the forest floor.
“We should probably get out of the woods,” Jeremy said. They went over to gather up their stuff. As they did, Jeremy pulled out the little notebook he’d been keeping in the first aid kit and scribbled a quick note about the creature, a description of its physical appearance and overlay, how they had killed it, and how much their levels appeared to change. Then he tucked it away and gestured for Caleb to lead the way.
“Do you think that we fully recovered while being passed out?” Caleb asked.
“After just thirty minutes?” Jeremy said. “Probably not. Zanie, have you tried looking through the book for that rune that is in your overlay?”
“No, not really. I’ve just been focusing on scanning it. Almost done, by the way. I only have a few pages left.”
“Well, you were saying that you might want to try and focus more on magic. I don’t know exactly what your affinity is, but heating things up seems to come naturally to you, so maybe you could try some of the spells you have an affinity for.”
They veered off the pretty straight course that Caleb had set them on to go around a downed tree, the crown of which lay in their path, brittle brown leaves still clinging to the branches and rattling in the wind. Jeremy had been keeping his eyes mostly on his feet to avoid tripping over any rocks or sticks, but he looked up when Caleb veered around the downed tree and saw that he could see a break in the trees where they gave way to open light. It looked pretty wide, like a field of some kind, not just like a small clearing, which meant that hopefully, they were out of the woods, although ending up in a farmer’s field probably was not much better, especially if the thunderstorms moving in were going to hit soon.
“Yeah, alright.” She said. “It didn’t really hit me that it wouldn’t all be stuff like those imps. I mean, that thing was crazy. What was it?”
“No clue.” Jeremy shrugged, “But I wouldn’t stop practicing with the knife as a backup or working on your aim with a gun. Probably better to have varied skills. Bullets didn’t seem to do much to that creature, but they’ve helped me out against worse.”
“Hey guys?” Caleb called. Jeremy furrows his brow and looked back to see that he had stopped walking and fallen a few paces behind them. There was this expression on his face like his stomach had just dropped into his shoes, face a little pale and eyes wide.
“You not feeling okay?” Zanie asked.
“No, I’m fine, but I just realized…” He made eye contact with Jeremy, “Where is Atticus?”
Jeremy’s stomach dropped to his shoes. He looked around for her black form and realized that the last place he actually remembered seeing her was back by the highway when they’d done the life sense spell. He had gotten used to her following along close by, sometimes wandering off a bit but always yo-yoing back. But never had they been separated this long, either for the half mile or so they had walked or the amount of time that had passed when he was unconscious.
He cupped his hands around his mouth and yelled, “Atticus?”
They waited for a couple of seconds, then all three started shouting her name.
“We have to retrace our steps,” Jeremy said when she did not come running. He glanced back at the edge of the tree line and grimaced. “Where were you leading us anyway, Caleb?”
Maybe retracing their steps was the better option.
“Well, we were between Exit 45 and 46, which meant that if we cut directly East…” he pointed toward the edge of the trees, “We would have run into town more quickly than following the road to either exit. You saw it was mostly just a bunch of neighborhoods by the highway.”
“Whatever, it doesn’t matter.” Jeremy waved his hands and started marching back into the woods. “We’ve got to try to find her, then we can set up in the shelter of the sound barriers on the side of the highway for all I care.”
With the way the wind was picking up and the air around them was darkening, it would be a miracle if they even made it that far before the storm started.
“I hope it does rain.” Zanie scratched her cheek as she caught up to him, and some of the blood drying on her skin flaked off. Then her eyes widened, and she cupped her hands so that she could catch the water she conjured in them. She used the spell to splash her face a couple of times, then made a face. “No, I need a shower.”
“Well, we’ll stick to the highway until we find a spot with a hotel right off the exit. If we walk along those concrete barriers, it should protect us from the wind and rain for the most part.” Jeremy told her. “But first, we’ve got to find Atticus.”
“She probably just lost track of us and will come running as soon as she hears her name,” Zanie assured Jeremy. They passed the body of the creature that they had killed, calling out Atticus’s name all the while. Fifteen minutes or so passed, and they reached the highway. In that time, Jeremy’s voice had gone hoarse, the first few flashes of lightning and rumbles of thunder had begun rolling over the area, and the cat still had not shown up. It felt like everything was going wrong all of a sudden.
They wandered around in circles, continuing to shout Atticus’s name. Jeremy pulled out the life sense spell and cast it. He sprinted in a wide circle while the spell lasted, trying to cover as much distance as possible, since he knew he could only cast it about twice before he would become too fatigued to use it again. He saw faint traces of color from the trees - no more noticeable than the overlays normally were for him - and a couple little red and yellow bloods that he got excited over, but realized were just squirrels when they spiraled up a tree.
When the spell ended, he slowed to a stop and looked down at the paper in his hand. He could cast it again, but then he would be desperately in need of a nap again and he wasn’t even sure if his mana was fully recovered from the fight they just had. A few drops of rain landed on the paper and on Jeremy’s forehead. He quickly folded it up and opened his bag to shove it inside the first aid kit. Caleb and Zanie had also felt the rain and started to come toward him, eyes filled with worry as they looked at the trees bending in the wind and the lightning flashing overhead.