When Jeremy woke up the next morning, it was eerily quiet. At first, he could not figure out at all what was going on, all he knew was that something was off. The room was dark, illuminated only by the cracks of light seeping in from around the blinds and curtains. He rolled onto his side and reached for the lamp on the table between the two beds to flip it on.
Nothing happened.
The power was out. That explained the eerie silence. Where there would usually be a hum of the a/c unit, there was nothing. He put a hand over his eyes and groaned. Caleb shifted on his bed, either woken up by Jeremy’s movements or by whatever it was that had roused Jeremy. Maybe the power had only just cut off and that was what woke them up, because Jeremy hardly felt rested enough to get out of bed.
“What time is it?” He asked, voice groggy and cracked.
There was a flash of blue light on Caleb’s side of the room, accompanied by a grumble of complaint. “Does time even matter anymore?”
“I just wanna know how long we’ve been asleep.” Jeremy pushed the sheets off and swung his legs over the side of the bed. It was not too terribly hot yet, at least. So, the a/c probably did not shut off all that long ago. He stood and went over to the window while Caleb squinted blearily at his phone.
“I’m opening the curtains,” he warned, then pulled them aside with a loud scrape. The blinds cascaded and knocked together as he pushed them out of the way too. Outside, the sun was still low on the horizon, off somewhere behind the hotel building, which cast a shadow over the parking lot.
Everything looked pretty normal outside, all things considered. On the road in front of the hotel, a car drove past. Whatever was causing the power outage was obviously somewhere else, since there seemed to be no commotion or electric company vehicles about. There had been talk on the news about creatures that ate metal, so perhaps they had chewed through some of the lines that fed this town, or at least this section of town, its power. They might be interesting to track down to gain some experience while the opportunity presented itself.
“We slept for like…twelve hours man.” Caleb’s arm flopped onto the bed and he stared up at the ceiling. “Does not feel like that.”
“That’s just because we slept too long.” Jeremy told him.
“I don’t know. We keep staying up for so long because the days are longer, so maybe our bodies need that much sleep.”
Jeremy hummed. Maybe they should start taking some substantial midday naps to make sure they were getting enough rest. Caleb was probably right and the messed up ratio of wakefulness to sleep was starting to get to their bodies.
“The power is out,” Jeremy told Caleb.
“I was wondering why the a/c was off,” He sat up and rubbed the heel of his palm against his eye. “Blackout? Because it’s still so hot?”
“Or because those metal eating monsters cut off the lines,” Jeremy offered his hypothesis. Caleb dropped his hand and stared straight ahead, then a smile curled across his face.
“You want to go fight the metal eating monsters,” he concluded. “But I thought we were going to try to find some mana crystals.”
“Maybe we can figure out where the metal eating monsters are coming from?” Jeremy said. “Or maybe there is a high concentration of them nearby and there actually are some mana crystals there.”
Caleb shrugged, “Reasonable enough.” Then he got out of bed, stretched and padded into the bathroom. Jeremy started gathering up their things from the night before, pausing to look over the scan spell they were creating one last time. No matter what they ended up doing today – hunting down metal eating creatures or continuing to head back to his parents’ house – he would have to pick Hazel’s brain about the extra runes that he had been able to see.
Once Jeremy was done in the bathroom as well, and their bags were packed up and sitting on one of the bed ready to go, they left the room to meet up with Zanie and Hazel. Jeremy also wanted to go down and check out the continental breakfast, for which he did not hold out much hope, and ask around about the power outage.
It was a little dim down in the lobby, but not too bad because there were lots of windows letting plenty of light in. A few people milled about, but for the most part, the hotels were pretty empty since travel was so difficult and people were just staying at home for the most part anymore. Hazel sat at one of the tables in the breakfast area, gazing out the window. A couple of harried hotel employees were having a strained, hushed conversation behind the check-in desk.
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Jeremy went over to the desk and waited for them to notice him and pull themselves out of their conversation.
“Good Morning,” the lady said with a customer-service smile plastered onto her face, “We are aware of the power outage and the power companies are as well. They are working their hardest to restore power as soon as possible.”
Jeremy wondered how many people had woken up and come down here to ask her about it so far this morning. He was going to unfortunately add one more to the list. “Morning. Do you have any idea why the power is out?”
“The company said something about compromised lines,” she said.
“Did they tell you where?” he asked. She gave him an incredulous look, which was about all the answer he needed, “Thank you.”
He turned to Caleb and lifted his eyebrows, then they both wandered over to the breakfast area. Hazel looked up at their approach and nodded. They waved and browed through the meagre breakfast selections, which were mostly oatmeal packets. There was unfortunately no way to heat up water to make the oatmeal though.
“We’re going to have to go somewhere else for breakfast,” Caleb mourned.
“Yeah,” Jeremy grabbed a bunch of oatmeal packets and stuffed them into his pocket. They could take their continental breakfast to go and eat it at some point when they did have hot water. Then he held his hand out toward Caleb.
“Let me see your phone,” he said, “I’m going to call the power company and try to figure out if it’s something we might want to check out.”
Before Caleb could give him the phone though, the man who had been having the whispered conversation with the lady behind the check-in desk leaned over it and waved to get their attention. He gestured for Jeremy to come back over.
He waited until they were close enough that he could talk under his breath to them, “Am I seeing things, or is that an elf sitting there?”
“Yes,” Jeremy glanced over his shoulder at Hazel, “He is.”
“Should we call the police?” the woman asked.
Caleb laughed, which he tried to cover up with a cough when the two hotel concierges gave him a funny look. He held his fist up to his mouth to hide his smile and wiggled his eyebrows at Jeremy, who shook his head and ignored him.
“No, I don’t think so, ma’am.” Jeremy told her, “He is with us. We are traveling together.”
They both gaped at him.
Caleb cleared his throat and stepped in. “We are a group doing research on magic and the creatures that have been appearing. Which is why we are trying to figure out the origin of the power outage – to see if it might be something we can take care of.”
Jeremy hummed in agreement. He had never really thought of what they were doing as research, but Hazel at least was collecting data, and they were certainly learning a lot. It made them certainly sound like they knew what they were doing on some level, because the tight anxiety dropped away from the concierges and the looked at Hazel with curiosity instead of wariness.
“I saw that there were elves at the white house,” the lady said, “Are you from the government? Trying to figure out how to fix this whole mess?”
“Not exactly,” Jeremy said, cutting Caleb off before he messed with these people by launching into some type of ridiculous story about them being from a secret government agency that handles magic or something. “Do you have any more details about the outage?”
“I was late to my shift,” the man said, “because they had a road blocked on my route. I did see some of the electric company’s trucks past the roadblock, so that probably had something to do with it.”
“Can you give us directions?” Jeremy asked, stepping aside and gesturing for Caleb to listen, because he was their resident navigator. They thanked the concierges, then went over and sat down with Hazel.
“Good Morning,” he said, folding his hands on top of the table and leaning forward. “Are those two, all right? It seemed like they were worried about something, and I imagined it had to do with me.”
“They’re fine,” Jeremy waved dismissively, “People just aren’t used to seeing elves, but at this point they are seeing a lot of things they aren’t used to, so they’ll figure it out.”
Hazel frowned as he parsed through that sentence, then nodded and sat back. “I could have hidden my appearance with another spell, but the translation drains enough of my mana already and I could not really afford that. Most people don’t even notice anyway, unless I actually have a conversation with them.”
“Well, you dress and act pretty normally,” Caleb said, “But yeah, the ears kind of give it away.”
“Anyway, I was thinking we could go check out the power outage, because this heat is not enough to cause a blackout, so I think there must be something else going on.” Jeremy got them back on track. “But first we need to grab Zanie and then some breakfast.”
“I’m right here,” Zanie pulled out the plastic chair next to Hazel and plopped down in it. “Their breakfast sucks. We should see if that bagel place that we passed on the way here is open.”
“Cool, we can get going then,” Jeremy said. “We are going to try to track down whatever is causing the power outage.”
“You think it’s something magical?” Zanie asked, then before waiting for an answer nodded to herself and said, “If it has to do with electricity, then it is my time to shine.”
“Well, unless it’s lightning elementals, in which case you need to build up your resistance to their attacks and make your own stronger.” Jeremy pointed out.
“True,” she acquiesced, “No matter what, sounds like a good plan to me. They need to get the power on quick in this heat, although I think it’s supposed to break tomorrow when another set of storms comes through. Hopefully for good this time.”
They gathered themselves up and went to their rooms to grab their stuff and room keys. Hazel, who of course carried everything in his pocket, had already checked out of his room. Jeremy thought it was amazing to see an elf adapting so quickly to things like using key cards at a hotel. Regardless, they wished the two concierges good luck and thanked them for the information about the power outage. Then they headed out into the muggy, early morning which was already hotter than it had any right to be when they were finally tipping into autumn.