Perhaps unsurprisingly, Hazel was a big hit at the potluck. All the neighbors were curious about him, his world, and whether he liked the dish they brought. He did not reveal very much about himself except that he was a scientist, although that word was apparently not a direct translation. From his description, he sounded more like a Renaissance man, or an ancient philosopher or mathematician. Just following curiosities and making observations until he had enough to draw some conclusions. The scientific method was not a part of his practice.
He told the people who were curious that his world was not so different from Earth. It was much more stable since it never had an interruption of magic and was not a meeting of many different worlds. The land there was more mature and alive in its own right. Each tree learned to speak if it was old enough. It was possible to converse with mountains and rivers. The land of Earth was not quite so chatty, according to him, but we had dryads. Our plants and animals – including humans – would be able to grow more completely now that magic had been returned, and they could cultivate themselves.
That word had come up several times, and Jeremy needed to ask him more about it.
As for whether or not he liked the dishes at the potluck – he tried each one and took seconds of some but not others. He complimented each dish even if he only took one small bite from it. Jeremy thought that he seemed quite diplomatic and wondered exactly what other elves were like if Hazel was not considered good with formal diplomatic settings. People who could perform mind control, perhaps?
He was not sure he fully trusted anything that came through the gates, no matter how mundane and knowledgeable Hazel seemed. But he certainly was not about to turn down the opportunity to learn from his knowledge.
The next morning, as they were packing up, Hazel raised his eyebrows at their multitude of bags and camping equipment and offered to show Caleb how to create a bag of holding.
“See here.” He flipped back the seam of his jeans pocket and showed Caleb the line of runes embroidered into the pocket lining. “As soon as we arrived and acquired clothing more suited for this world, a member of our party, who is far more adept at enchanting than the rest of us, enchanted them for us.”
“Jeremy!” Caleb called. “Come look at this. It’s an enchanted pocket.”
Jeremy scooped Atticus up from his lap and held her as he stood and went to take a look. The same string of runes as the ones on the crystal and on the inside cover of the book was neatly stitched into the pocket lining. They were followed by the rune for space and a few others.
“So these ones here,” he traced his finger over the first couple of runes, “are specific to enchanting, right?”
“Yes,” Hazel said. “They imbue the object with whatever properties you complete the enchantment with. It’s a nitpicky process that requires extreme attention to detail.”
“Huh,” Jeremy watched as Caleb took a picture of the enchantment. “How much stuff can you fit in there?”
“I’m not really sure.” Hazel flipped the hem of his pocket back up and patted it. “I’m not good with the details, hence why I’m not proficient at enchanting. But I haven’t filled it so far. Theoretically, you could create an infinite space, but that would drain so much of your energy that it is impractical.”
Jeremy scratched between Atticus’s ears a bit when she started to get restless in his arms. “So how does powering the enchantment work? Does it require a constant source of mana?”
“Yes,” Hazel said. “You either have to connect it to a concentrated source of mana, such as a crystal, or feed it some of your own mana. You could – again, theoretically – work the enchantment so that it fed on ambient mana, but there isn’t really enough in the general surroundings most of the time to actually power anything useful. At least, not here on Earth.”
Caleb was zooming in on his picture of the enchantment, looking over each rune. He turned the phone toward Hazel and asked, “Do you know what all of these mean?”
Hazel eyed the screen. “Some, but not all.”
“So, what is the source of mana for that enchantment?” Jeremy asked.
“Ah, well, in the actual pocket, there is a mana crystal.” Hazel reached into the pocket and drew out a small pinkie-sized crystal that was wrapped up in a webbing of thread, which presumably connected it back to the literal stitching of the enchantment. It glowed slightly with swirls of mana beneath the smooth facets of its crystalline structure.
“Does it literally have to be connected like that?” Jeremy asked.
“Jesus, stop grilling the poor guy, you two.” Zanie closed the door to the house behind herself and walked down the steps. She was carrying a grocery bag in one hand and holding her other over her mouth as she yawned. The bag crinkled as she held it up. “Snacks for the road.”
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
She bent to put them into one of the bags as the door opened again and Henry and Julie came into the garage.
“I can’t believe you guys are finally heading out!” Julie came down the steps and held her arms out to give Zanie a big hug, then went to Jeremy and Caleb to give them each a hug, too. Jeremy patted her awkwardly on the back with one hand. She took a step back and grinned. “Thank you so much again for getting rid of the dungeon.”
“No problem,” Jeremy said, a little uncomfortable being thanked yet again when that had been all anyone seemed to be able to say to them last night at the potluck.
Henry stepped forward and held a white envelope up for them to see. “Everyone in the neighborhood contributed a little bit to put together a thank you present. It’s only a couple hundred because people are saving since we don’t know what’s going to happen next, but we wanted to get together to show our gratitude.”
“Oh, well…” Zanie glanced at Jeremy awkwardly.
They really should not turn down money when offered, especially since they had done the neighborhood a service. They would likely have had to abandon their homes otherwise. But he felt kind of bad, since they had not asked for money up from like they had with Mrs. Jennings. And Henry was right when he said people were probably tightening their purse strings while everything was still apocalyptic and scary. Then again, if they could accept money from a little old lady like Mrs. Jennings, they should just take the money that this neighborhood offered.
In his momentary panic of trying to decide what to do, Zanie continued, “We got enough of a reward by gaining experience from clearing the dungeon, honestly. We couldn’t accept.”
“Just take it,” Henry ordered. “Everyone already pooled their money, so…”
“Well,” Caleb said, stepping forward to take the envelope. We wouldn’t want to turn down your generosity.”
After all, they still had phone bills – with the exception of Jeremy - to pay and needed to eat, and the nine hundred they had gotten from Mrs. Jennings would only last so long when none of them had jobs anymore.
After a couple of final goodbyes and reassurances that everyone had exchanged contact information and that the neighborhood would reach out to Jeremy and company if they ever needed help again, they picked up all of their bags and walked down the driveway. They passed over the court with all of its scorch marks and headed for the highway again.
Atticus trotted along with them. Jeremy, suspecting that she understood far more than a regular cat at this point, had threatened to put her on a harness and leash again if she disappeared again. She had just observed him haughtily, then lifted a leg and began cleaning herself. Damn cat.
Caleb led the party, much to Hazel’s fascination. He seemed very interested in how an affinity for spatial magic manifested. So, for a while, he walked beside Caleb and talked to him while Zanie and Jeremy marched along behind. Then he dropped back and started asking Zanie about her unique personality trait.
Despite her earlier sentiment that they should all stop interrogating Hazel, she turned the conversation back around to him and asked, “So I get that there is an illusion spell that you cast so we could understand you. Does it work in reverse at the same time so that you can understand us, or is that a separate spell?”
It was hard to resist asking him questions when he was such a new, exciting source of knowledge. Plus, he was interrogating them just as much about their experience.
“The spell incorporates instructions so that the translation works in both directions,” Hazel answered.
“How exactly does that work?” Jeremy asked. “What do you mean it incorporates instructions?”
“Just simply that there are runes for both projecting an illusion to me via incoming information and one to project an illusion to others when I put out information.”
“Okay,” Jeremy nodded along, then recalled that they also had a spell that projected an illusion via incoming information, as Hazel put it. “Where did the life sense spell end up?”
He had lost track of it and the other dungeon rewards last night when their conversation was interrupted in order to go to the potluck. Hazel gestured towards Zanie. “I returned it.”
At the same time, she slung her backpack off one shoulder and brought it to her front so she could rifle through it.
“Here,” she held the paper out to Jeremy. “When you are done with it, I’ll go ahead and put it into the notes section that I am creating in the back of the book.”
Hazel listened curiously, and when Zanie mentioned the book, he tilted his head to the side. “What is this book? I’ve heard you mention it a few times?”
“It’s a collection of spells from the council. Everything in it is in a different language, so it’s not the most useful, but it’s been all we’ve had to work with.” Jeremy stumbled to the side a little bit because his attention was split between the spell in his hand and Hazel, so he did not see the chunk of asphalt in his path. He managed not to twist his ankle by some miracle, then held the paper out for Hazel and kept his eyes on where he was putting his feet.
“Is one of these runes for creating an illusion?” he asked.
Hazel took the paper and looked it over. “Yes, this one.” He pointed to one of them, then moved his finger across the paper, “And this one is for aether. And I don’t know this one, actually.”
He tapped on the unknown rune a few times, and Jeremy frowned at it. “The spell lets you see living things around you. It looks kind of like infrared. We call it life sense.”
“Infrared?” Hazel asked, eyebrows drawing down. Either this was surprising enough to confuse him, or his spell did not have a good translation for infrared, which was a possibility since the elves likely did not have infrared cameras.
“It’s like a heat signature,” Jeremy explained. “Lets you see if there is something living or absorbing heat. Even through walls and stuff. You can cast the spell if you want to see what I mean.”
Hazel hummed and then did so. The runes floated around his hands, then dissipated in the air. He turned his eyes from Jeremy to Zanie, then to Caleb, who was walking slightly ahead of them with Atticus trotting beside his feet.
“I see,” he said. “This rune probably had something to do with scanning the environment to look for aether. You wanted this back?”
He held it out to Zanie, but Jeremy took it from him first. He looked down at the rune and chewed on his fingernail. Then slowly came to a stop. Zanie and Hazel paused to look back at him with twin expressions of confusion.
“Jeremy?” Zanie asked.
He shook his head and furrowed his brow at the paper. Maybe this was the way he could create a spell so that people could see mana. If he simply replaced the aether rune with the mana rune, then theoretically, it would show an output of mana concentrations. Slowly, he lowered the paper and grinned at his companions.