The storm seemed to grow worse over the progression of only a minute or two. The atmosphere around them darkened to such a degree that everything seemed gray-toned and muted twilight just after the sun had gone down. The clouds above were black, flashing with lightning and rolling with thunder. And the raindrops were fat and heavy, leaving dark, wet splotches when they plopped against the faded asphalt road. The sky opened, and the rain poured as if someone standing up in the clouds was dumping a bucket of water out. In a matter of seconds, the entire surface of the road was covered in water, bouncing with the constant onslaught of droplets.
And the three of them were entirely soaked through. Hair sticking to their faces and necks, clothes clinging to their skin, and bags growing heavy as the water seeped through them. Jeremy hoped to god that Zanie was keeping the book inside its plastic bag. She was standing with her face turned toward the sky, wiping her face with her hands to help the rain wash the blood from her skin and hair. Jeremy and Caleb, on the other hand, kept their heads down, shielding their eyes from the pelting raindrops with their hands and forearms.
They could not look for Atticus in conditions like this. Not only could they barely see in front of them because the rain was so heavy, coming down in sheets whipped about by the wind so that it always seemed to be smacking them straight in the face, but the storm was so loud that shouting for her was useless anyhow. Jeremy stood there feeling more than a little desperate and sick to his stomach at the thought of Atticus hunkering down somewhere in this weather. He should have just gone to his parents first to drop her off.
Caleb had been trying to shout something at him, but his voice was whipped away by the wind and scattered amongst the raindrops. So, he grabbed Jeremy and Zanie’s arms and hauled them into a sprint across the couple hundred meters to where the sound barrier replaced the open forested edges of the road. They leaned against the solid barrier, gasping for breath, then hunkered down, crouched close to the ground.
“This is nuts.” Caleb hollered, and this close to the solid concrete, Jeremy could actually hear him. It was wild. He’d seen nothing like it except when hurricanes managed to make their way up the coast every few years. Describing the rain as driving down at an angle was an understatement. The trees in the woods they had just been walking in swayed wildly, crashing into each other and leaning at angles that made it look like the wind had dug its claws into their branches and literally tugged them the way it was blowing an unrelenting physical force. Jeremy shook his head in disbelief.
“I mean,” Caleb squeezed his eyes shut as a gust whipped rain into his face and gulped. “There wasn’t even a weather advisory!”
“Weather reporting is all messed up because of the satellites being down,” Zanie shouted back, each word loud and emphasized. Jeremy wiped the water from his eyes and looked around.
They probably should not stay out in this. He watched the clouds light up and listened to another ominous rumble of thunder. But they had, unfortunately, come out here to test the life sense spell without being near anything or anyone. Their best bet was to see if maybe someone in one of the houses in the neighborhoods behind the sound barrier would let them shelter for the length of the storm.
Zanie was also thinking about how they were going to shelter, shouting, “We can’t even set up tents in this!”
They certainly could not, but it gave Jeremy the idea to throw up a barrier at a slant over their heads like a lean-to. The rain pelted against it, sluicing down its slope, exactly like what a heavy downpour looked like against the windshield of a car, nearly opaque. This had the unfortunate consequence of adding even more sound, the deafening rain hitting the shield, but at least they could breathe for a couple of moments while it was not pelting them. How long the shield would last under that onslaught, Jeremy had no idea.
“I’m going to…” Caleb jerked a thumb over his shoulder, then left his bags with them and crept toward the edge of the sound barrier, where he peered around to see what might be on the other side. By the time he returned, Jeremy had cast another barrier to replace the first. He shook his head and wiped his hair off his face, gasping for breath.
“There’s houses.” He shouted. “Maybe…”
Zanie nodded, and Jeremy adjusted the straps of their bags, ready to make a charge against the wind and the rain. If it were a typical rainstorm, he might have been able to put a barrier over them like an umbrella, although that would require an addition to the spell to keep it moving with them as they walked. It was a moot point for now because the rain was not simply falling from the sky.
As they ran around the end of the sound barrier into the backyards of the neighborhood behind it, there was a loud crash, which at first sounded like a sharp clap of thunder but actually came from the woods – a tree falling, probably. With the way the trunks were bending, Jeremy was hardly surprised.
The houses were situated in a circle around the end of a court. The side yard between two houses afforded a little bit of shelter from the wind. But not much. They watched as a piece of siding lifted from the side of one of the houses and began flapping around.
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“There!” Zanie shouted, pointing to a house on the opposite side of the little circle. It looked like all the other houses: two-story, white siding, with a small front porch and an attached garage. Except this house’s garage door was open. Sitting in the open bay, behind the two cars parked in the driveway, was a man in a folding chair, just out of where the wind blew rain inside. The guy had to be nuts, but he might let them stand in his garage. They sprinted across the street to try his house first.
As soon as he saw them coming, he stood up from his chair and marched to the side of the garage, where a workbench was wrapped around the side and back walls. It was meticulously clean; everything was organized onto a pegboard above it, and only a few car parts or cans of brake cleaner were along the back edge. He pulled out a shotgun from a crevice between the workbench and a tall red metal toolbox. Which was fair. They were running at him with carbines strapped to their chests.
They came to a stop in his driveway between the two cars as he pointed the barrel at them. Jeremy put his hands in the air, far away from his M4. He took a step forward to shout through the wind, the wind sluicing down his face and into his mouth as he spoke. “Wait. We just want to shelter from the storm. We don’t want to hurt you.”
“Yeah?” The man hollered back, holding the shotgun steady. “Likely story.”
A piece of roofing – several shingles stuck together in a large, jagged square – ripped off the roof of the house to their right and came hurtling toward them. Caleb cursed as they all ducked down between the cars. The shingles slammed into the metal roof of the car to their left. Jeremy wiped some of the rain from his eyes and looked at the man with the shotgun.
“We got caught out in it, I swear.” He shouted. “We’re fine with just standing in the garage.”
“I’ve seen the news!” The man adjusted his stance, bracing his feet wider, “You kids going around looting everything. A storm is the perfect opportunity for you to take advantage of.”
At this point, people didn’t really need a storm to take advantage of since first responders were so overtaxed they couldn’t come out to an intruder call on a bright and sunny day, but now was not the time to point that out. Jeremy turned his head to the side to look at Caleb. “Try another house?”
“I say we rush the guy.”
“You’re an idiot,” Zanie told him from over Jeremy’s shoulder.
Caleb chuckled and rolled his eyes. “Yeah, let's try another house.” Then, in a louder voice, laced with sarcasm, he shouted into the garage, “Sorry for bothering you, sir. Hope nothing blows into your garage while you have the door up.”
A branch with many of its leaves attached and a bright, yellow spray of wood at the base where it had been freshly ripped off a tree cartwheeled down the street behind them. And in its wake, the air seemed to begin to gather in the center of the street, leaves and twigs swirling in a circle. This continued for a few seconds, long enough that it became apparent it was not just from the wind that was already blowing everything around but from some other force.
Jeremy put a hand over his eyes and glanced up at the clouds, which were uniformly dark and ominous. No threatening circular green swirl that might herald a tornado or a microburst. Although, bizarrely, the clouds did begin to swirl around, not as if the storm was moving them, but as if someone had taken a spoon and reached up to stir them in a circle. Whatever was happening, its origin was on the asphalt, affecting the clouds overhead, not the other way around.
“What on earth?” Zanie sputtered.
In the middle of the court circle, flashes cascaded from the center of the swirl of leaves. And then, a bolt of lightning arced out of it and slammed into a mailbox, sending a shower of bright sparks into the air. Jeremy glanced back into the garage to see the man had lowered the shotgun slightly as he stared openmouthed beyond them at another bolt of lightning, which flashed out from the center of the swirl rather than from the clouds overhead.
Jeremy ducked as the second bolt slammed into one of the cars they were crouched between, sending sparks showering over their heads. Caleb shouted and shuffled away from the car. Something else had joined into the vortex of leaves and flashes of lightning, a shimmering, iridescent quality to the air that looked like heat waves rising off the top of a sun-baked car, except they glimmered with a kaleidoscope of colors instead of just distorting what lay behind them. This was how the entire world had appeared to him as before the old god made his sight manageable, which meant there was some kind of serious magic going on because he could see the raw mana.
“Into the garage.” He ordered, springing to his feet and charging under the garage door. He threw up a barrier just in case the man decided to take a shot. He just startled at Jeremy’s sudden movement and lifted the barrel in their direction, eyes flicking between them and the vortex outside.
Caleb and Zanie stumbled in behind Jeremy, all three of them dripping on the concrete floor. It was dark and shiny up to the point where the rain could no longer blow into the garage and only a spray of droplets was visible. Water poured off them as though they had just walked out of a pool, and their shoes left dark footprints on the concrete.
“Listen,” Jeremy told the man, “We just don’t want to be outside with that.” He waved at the two arcs of lightning now tearing up the court. “We don’t want to rob you or anything.”
Another branch landed on the cars, sending a spray of water and leaves inside.
“You might want to close your garage door, dude.” Caleb said incredulously, “What on earth are you doing out here with it open?”
“I didn’t realize it was going to turn into some kind of magical twister.” The man backed toward the side of the garage door opening, keeping an eye on them as he jammed his fingers into the button to lower it. He had a shaved head and broad shoulders beneath an open flannel shirt over a white work shirt stained with oil and dirt. He scowled at them. “What the hell were you doing outside?”
“Looking for my cat,” Jeremy said. Then he went over to the regular door to the side of the garage door. It had a window in it, which he probably should not stand next to, but he was compelled by curiosity to watch the mana gathering in the center of the circle. It had merged into a swirling amorphous shape of bright blue energy, just like…
“Is that a dungeon forming?” Zanie asked, peering out the window beside him.