I awoke regretting every decision that had brought me to this point in my life. Not only did my neck feel like the local Irish dance troupe had used it to practise on, DOMS was playing the havok crescendo on every other muscle I have. Seriously, why do my pinkie toes hurt?

I stood, shoving the useless seat cushion under the sofa where it could think about its utter failure as a pillow, and swayed on my feet. I grabbed the bannister for support lest I tumble down the stairs and was surprised at how spongy the wood felt under my hand. I didn’t expect top quality construction from a house thrown together to be rented out but I also didn’t expect painted balsa wood. When I inspected the fingerprints I’d left in the rail I had to adjust my thinking a bit however as it was clearly pine and it was obvious that I’m now a tad stronger than when I’d gone to sleep.

I peeled my fingers out of the grooves and staggered into the shower as I considered how much the landlord would be taking out of my bond for that. I wonder if insurance covers Acts of Level Up the same way as Acts of God? The hot water sluiced away the sweat that had poured out of me whileI slept and helped with the DOMS. That’s Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness, for the non-gym-bros out there, not multiple dominatrixes. I only have one of those in my life and she is currently missing.

I yelped as the water suddenly turned cold and I wondered if, in my twisting and stretching trying to relieve the muscle pain, I’d accidentally backed into the handle of the mixer. The single handle that had replaced taps were notoriously finicky anyway as they were 68% arctic cold, 30% satan’s armpit hot and that one percent nice. However, even turning the handle all the way to the hot end still only produced cold water so I sighed and gave up.

As I vigorously towelled myself dry I wandered through the bedroom and glanced at the clock to find it blank. Concerned, I flipped the nearby light switch and my stomach dropped when the bedroom light failed to come on. Well, that’s what happened to the hot water, I mused. That’s the bugger of instantaneous hot water heaters, no power means that even if you still have gas to heat the water, there’s no spark to light it.

I threw on trackpants and a long sleeve shirt, gathered all the important tech and took it downstairs to the kitchen. We’d had power outages before so Aimee and I had a healthy stack of power banks I kept charged at all times. I topped up the tablet and drone then turned them off to save power but kept my phone on. My smartwatch was sitting at 67% so I let it be. It could last at least a week unless I used the GPS or SPO2 tracker.

A noise from behind me reminded me of a responsibility I’d been neglecting in all the kerfuffle. One of our rats was digging through his dry food bowl and it was making a tinkling noise. The late afternoon light was shining through the window behind the cage and keeping it warm so I didn’t have to worry about that but I popped open the door and gave his rough fur a scritch before extracting their water bowl to rinse and refill. One of them, probably Winston, kept dropping food pellets in the water and making it icky. I glanced at my watch and compared it to the sun coming in the window and decided that despite it only being a bit after 4:30 I’d feed the boys before I went candle hunting.

I chuckled at the three shoving each other out of the way to stick their noses in the bowl despite there being plenty of room around it for them to fit without their whiskers even touching and pulled open the hallway closet. It wasn’t much of a space, just what fit under the stairs and technically wasn’t even in a hallway, just the short walkway past the kitchen to the front room and entranceway. There was enough room to stash a vacuum, a mop and bucket, and a box of junk Aimee and I hadn’t emptied despite living here for almost a year now. I flipped open the top and dug around for a bit before dredging up a plastic tub full of tealights of varying size and scent. They’d burn for an hour or so each and we had a metric buttload so I felt zero compunction about using them. Worst case I’d meander down to the Reject Shop and buy twice as many as I used for a dollar. I laid out several on the kitchen bench and as an afterthought put the stove lighter beside them.

I turned around to the stove itself and tried turning it on but the sparker on the gas range top was mains powered as well. I grabbed the stove lighter, a bright pink monstrosity with a bendy metal shaft so you could light the gas around corners or whatever, turned on the gas and pulled the trigger. The good thing about these devices is that even if they’re out of butane themselves, the piezoelectric sparker is enough to light the stove or give a friend a jolt. Normally the trigger on this one took more strength to pull, to the point that if the stove wouldn't start I’d have to use my thumb for repeated sparking. Now it was effortless. Hooray for plus one STR I guess? I put a pot of water on the stove to make myself a tea and waited for it to boil.

While waiting, I pulled out my phone and checked the messages. None. Bugger. Signal? Got 4G, so that’s good. At least the towers still have power. Then I checked the power company website for outages, but this one hadn’t registered yet. To conserve power I put the phone in Ultimate Battery Saver mode with an exception for messages and phone calls and dropped it in my pocket.

Well, damn. What do I do now? I pulled Bailey, the rat with fur the colour of Baileys Irish Cream, out of the cage and hugged him. He was Aimee’s favourite and his girth showed it. “You need to go on a diet, buddy. You’re almost a whole ass kilo.”

Bailey responded by licking my finger vigorously.

“You’re right. We need to get your mum back. What do you think we should do?” I held the rat up so I could look into his eyes.

Bailey sneezed in my face, then rubbed his nose. I placed him on my shoulder and wiped rat snot off my face with my sleeve.

“Fine. I’ll do it myself.” I wandered back to the stove and made myself a cup of tea with Bailey holding on to my ear for balance. When he’d been smaller he could perch there like a pirate’s parrot but with the size of him it was that or flop over my shoulder like a stole. I missed those days.

Flopping into a lounge chair, I set Bailey on the floor and took a sip of my drink. He’d climb back into the cage on his own and I was too distracted trying to think of another way to find Aimee. Phones were out of the question, we didn’t have a home phone these days - who does? - and I was fresh out of homing pigeons. I knew she knew my mobile number in case she managed to get to a landline but without power it would surely die soon.

I looked back to the boys’ cage to make sure Bailey had made it back safe and realised that I should have been able to see the dire wolf corpse through the window. When I’d dropped in the back yard earlier it was higher than the windowsill. Scared that it had respawned or something, I grabbed my abused bokken and reefed open the back door.

My heart slowed to a dull purr when I saw there was still a dead dog in the back yard. It had just shrunk down to normal proportions. I poked it with the tip of the bokken just in case but it lay there in the way that dead things did and got on with the process of decomposition. Whatever had empowered it last night had drained away over the course of the day - to my utter relief.

I poked it once more just to be safe and heard a loud zapping noise, as though a thousand people had scrubbed their shoes over the carpet and poked the same poor sod at the same time. I jumped back with my weapon in front of me but the deceased animal didn’t move. When the sound repeated I realised it was coming from above me, not in front.

Up on the power lines, little yellow will o'the wisps were surging along the line in fits and spurts to the sound of the static cracks. Well, bugger, I thought, I’m guessing this power outage isn’t your average blown fuse. I briefly considered calling the police again, but considering how useful they’d been this morning, i.e. less than a chocolate hammer, I decided to at least check it out.

Not that I was going to dash out the door unprepared, even as ready as I’d been this morning I learned the hard way that the world was a different place now and since I couldn’t assume previously safe places weren’t death traps then walking into a known adventure hook would be a one way ticket to the grave.

I pulled out a roll of “instant airframe” tape I’d scored from a friend in Defence and patched the holes in my motorcycle jacket. This stuff was canvas reinforced and sticky enough to tape a car to the ceiling. That’s not a metaphor either, I’ve seen the photos. The horrible jungle green stood out against the white of the Alpine Star jacket, but beggars couldn’t be choosers.

Inspired, I tried wrapping the blade of the bokken in the stuff to reinforce it but after two turns and just over a handspan from the hilt there were so many ripples in the tape from trying to manage the job one handed that I gave up. I’d just have to find a replacement soon instead.

Finally, I pulled an LED camping lantern from the hall cupboard and hung it from the boy’s cage. I didn’t want to leave them in the dark but I sure as hell wasn’t leaving the candles lit if I was headed out. Fire doesn’t play games.

“G’night boys!” I called as I pulled the front door shut, feeling the golden ripple once more. I paused on the front path and consulted the JOURNAL page in case it had any hints.

You light up my life:

The power has gone out and while you’re not the first one to notice, you are the first one to decide to do something about it. That said, you shouldn’t wait about or someone else will do it for you. Find the source of the disruption and restore power to your neighborhood before it gets worse, or someone else steals your thunder. You might be amped about your new power, but you’re not the only bright spark in this area. Snap to it.

I groaned about the puns, but at least it wasn’t snark this time. The MAP page was particularly unhelpful as it was just a massive circle over the whole neighborhood and I could see exactly where the wisps were going anyway. I checked my gear and strode off down the footpath towards the main road.

The streets were still quite deserted and all the houses were either dark or dimly lit with torches or candles. I saw some movement at ground level but they were just flickers jumping from one pool of shadow to the next in the growing twilight. I couldn’t really discern shapes or even if they weren’t just the strobing from the lights on the power lines.

I turned left onto Point Cook road, still following the cracking lights above, and keeping a wary eye on the bushes that lined the street. Not that this was a new behaviour, people let their dogs run free a bit too often and they loved to leap out of the gardens to either bark at you, lick you, or bite you depending on the size of the dog, the size of you and how recently they’d been fed.

Ten uneventful minutes into the walk a very obviously newly modified paddy wagon rolled past, lights and sirens blaring, as something within did its level best to knock the fresh armour plating off the containment area from the inside. Yeah, I don’t envy them that job at all. Not a fan of cops, but maybe they’ve got bigger problems than a little power outage.

The noise of the embattled police vehicle faded as I turned right towards the riverside park in the heart of the new estate. My crackling GPS path overhead was no longer heading towards the shops but to a glow in the distance. In the fading light it looked like someone had set up a circus tent on the far side of the river, with the concentration of wisps on the lines increasing to the point that they resembled the strand lights that the Big Top strung between attractions.

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

I picked up my pace, but not so much that I’d leave myself out of breath in case I was ambushed.

The light increased further as I approached the bridge over the river and I could finally see my goal. By now the wisps were so thick on all the power lines that they were solid strands of light streaming along between power poles and the light they provided was brighter than the sunset. Once they reached the park however, they leapt off the lines at four power poles in a square around the playground. From there they flew through the air to four fat humanoids who sat in a meditative position in the sand around a piece of play equipment, one hand in their glowing lap and the other holding a staff with what looked to be a doughnut on top. Their golden glowing bodies appeared entirely unconcerned with the wisps striking them in the back and being absorbed. If I didn’t know better I’d think they were Buddha statues pinched from the local Bunnings but every now and again one would shift slightly to get more comfortable or a staff would sway a bit. Sure, in this brand new world there could be living garden statues, but I got the feeling they were flesh and blood.

These four beings faced inwards towards the children’s playset that formed a dome made of interconnected aluminium bars. Normally all that sat beneath that dome was bare sand and the occasional kid crying over a skinned knee. Now, in a glowing ball shining so bright that the sun might as well have already set, something stirred. It grew with every moment the four fed it power and a dark shape moved within.

I had no idea how they’d come up with this so quickly, magic had only been in the world for less than twenty-four hours and here were what I could only guess were four tubby children summoning a monster. Or so I assumed.

I ducked back down under the rail of the bridge even though the wisps had shown no aggression and the sitting power pylons hadn’t really moved since I had arrived. I was hesitant to deal out lethal damage to apparent children, but whatever they were summoning couldn’t be let loose on the world. I was fortunate as my weapon was wood which was perfect for dealing with an electricity based threat. The leather armour gave me confidence that whatever these things dealt out I could handle. I took several deep breaths and levered myself to my feet.

I took the gentle path first, approaching the closest glowing figure peacefully with my hands raised. “Oi, kid,” I tried, “shouldn’t you be at home with your parents?”

No response. The wisps continued to stream into its back and electricity arced to the dome.

I drew the bokken and poked the kid, their clothing now more evidently a sheet with a knot tied over the shoulder. I could see normal t-shirt and shorts through the gap under the arm holding the staff. “Hey, are you listening to me? It’s time you went home and stopped playing silly buggers.”

The kid’s head snapped around and I saw white hot glowing eyes in the moment before a mule snuck up on me and kicked me in the shoulder. I sat up from a furrow in the sand and tried to brush myself off. The left hand wasn’t very effective and there was a smoking hole in the left shoulder of my jacket. The memory of the moment the kid looked at me replayed in my head and I realised that the power from his staff had hit me instead of being directed at the dome.

“Right, no more Mr Nice Guy,” I muttered as I extracted myself from the hole slowly and painfully. I walked up to the kid carefully and with the utmost care, rapped him upside the head with the bokken. I wasn’t about to let what happened to the goblins happen to an actual human child, but sod getting zapped again. The child rocked forward briefly, then laid out on his back with his legs still crossed. The staff rolled out of his hand and now that it wasn’t glowing I could see that it was a metal tent pole with the spike on the tip jabbed through a metal camp plate. Whatever had been forming the glowing doughnut around the rim of the plate was gone.

A sharp crack echoed across the playground and a spray of molten sand burned through the leg of my pants. While I had been examining the kid to make sure he was still breathing, the next one around the dome in the clockwise direction had aggro’d on me. Clearly when I had taken out the kid the next one in rotation had been forced to pick up the slack and wasn’t happy about it. Two streams of wisps were now flowing into their back and their staff would arc twice before moving to the next kid in sequence. Every second rotation they used one of the arcs to strike at me, so I moved anticlockwise around the dome to put it between them and my fleshy, easily electrocuted self.

Glancing right, I noticed that the closest kid was still oblivious to their compatriots' demise. Unwilling to risk another round of the amp dance I gave them a dose of wood to the skull. Once the glow had faded I noticed this one was a little girl. She and the other unconscious child bore a family resemblance and if they weren’t the same age they couldn’t have differed by more than a year.

Not that I’m great at judging kids' ages. Aimee and I don’t and aren’t having kids. As I pondered how to knock out the next child I realised that might not be such a bad thing. People had strong feelings about that sort of thing and to be fair, if this weren’t such a dire situation I’d never even consider it.

Now, once bitten twice shy, so I was watching for the next kid around to try flinging a lighting bolt at me. This one came right at my head and I ducked. I’m quite attached to my head and didn’t think a pre-pubescent Odin had any rights to it as a trophy. I dived forward into a roll, coming up driving my fist into the jaw of the little jerk.

Their eyes rolled into the back of their head, yay! Now I was in line of sight of the last kid, boo!

Being completely out of position I had zero chance of dodging the bolt that hit my back. I felt the duct tape I’d used to repair the hole melt to my back and I screamed words inappropriate for use around children who aren’t hellions attempting to fry me. The next bolt slammed into my ass cheek and I realised that all four streams were now solely under the control of the last kid. Fortunately for me, getting hit in the butt by a massive electric shock does wonders for your ability to jump aside and the third one grounded harmlessly in the sand several feet away.

I rolled over and over until the dome was between us before trying to get up. I could barely see through the gaps in the playset now, the glowing ball was like a small sun and small arcs of power were beginning to discharge back out to ground on the dome. The movement within was speeding up too, lending a sense of urgency to my need to stop the last child.

I decided to try something risky. The kid was most likely expecting me to come back around the dome from their left, but keeping an eye out to the right in case I got tricksy. Well, I took the chance and surged over the top of the dome, trusting my thick footwear to insulate me from whatever was going on below.

I was right, and when I dropped from above I drove the hilt of the bokken into the crown of the child’s head. He folded like a cheap suit and I kicked the staff away just in case.

Standing over the supine body sucking in deep breaths I felt relieved to the bottom of my soul that I’d stopped whatever they were doing. I resolved to check their pockets for ID in a moment, maybe find their house and get them home even if I had to lie about why they were sleeping.

“Skreeeee!” A high pitched scream from behind made me jump.

“Crap.” I turned slowly to see the ball under the dome shatter and fall to the sand. Left floating in the air was a lithe golden dragon of the Chinese mythology variety. It undulated and stretched, catlike and about as big as a large feline. “Fine, let’s do this.” I climbed through the bars feeling like I was entering a tiny version of the Thunder Dome. All I needed now was Tina Tuner to pop out of the woodwork and start singing to complete the look.

The dragon opened its eyes, yawned, and opened a second, translucent pair of eyelids. It hissed and launched itself at my head. I managed to lean to the side and avoid the snapping teeth but it slapped me in the face with its tail as it passed. I blinked my watering eyes and swayed back the other way just in case. I was right to do so, because the flying beast came right back at me from behind, using the dome to turn faster. Small claws raked my skull and I brought the bokken up to take a swing at the beast as it went by. I could barely see and just managed to clip a hind leg without doing much damage.

The dragon coiled its golden body around the bars of the dome and hissed at me. I pointed my bokken and growled. I don’t know why, it just seemed the thing to do.

A random wisp drifted under the dome, the light from it flickering and guttering, distracting me and the dragon leapt. I tried to block with my blade but the lizard wasn’t going for me. It swallowed the wisp whole and I could see the glow travel down the scaly neck and into the chest where it joined the glow already emanating from the dragon’s body.

The dragon shuddered and grew in both size and brightness. Not by much, but it was noticeable. Well, that adds a new time limit, I thought, looking around at the milling mass of wisps outside the dome. With no living pylons to convert them to electricity they were just drifting around the park, like ground bound fireflies. Those near the power poles were climbing back up to the lines and merging with them and the lights in nearby houses were starting to come back on, so it wasn’t all bad, but there were still enough meandering about the playground that I really didn’t want Scaley McMurderface snacking on them. Or on me.

The dragon swished back to the bars of the dome and wrapped itself around them like a snake. It hissed again and leapt towards me. I dropped to a knee and raised the bokken in a block in front of my face, driving it up under the dragon’s chin and forcing it over my head. I felt the wind as the gnashing teeth missed my nose by a hair. I dive rolled forward and spun to face my enemy.

The dragon undulated its way through the bars and snapped up a pair of wisps that had come too close to the base of the dome. It grew again, thickening in the body and the jaw lengthening. It was now the size of a small croc and would soon have trouble fitting through the bars. It spiralled up around the vertical bars until it was just a bit higher than my head and coiled back, taipan like.

Knowing what was coming I readied myself for another charge, this time taking careful aim. When the beast thrust forward I stepped left and swung right in a horizontal cut, hoping to knock it out at least and maybe knock it’s block off at best. Those hopes were dashed when the beast barrel rolled midair at the last second and bit the wooden blade in half.

I was glad the kids were unconscious, because I’d have taught them a whole new vocabulary at that point. German is a great language for swearing in and I used every one I knew.

By this time, Mushu had snapped up another wisp and now looked ready to harass rottweilers. I knew I had to find a way to stop this thing before it got any bigger. A mad plan came to me and I looked at the jagged stump of the once mighty bokken. It felt like a part of me had been taken away, a core memory destroyed. Our holiday to Japan had been one of the happiest times of our life together and my bokken was a memento of that.

“Bring it, Falcor, your luck has just run out.” I pointed my left hand at it like a drill sergeant knife handing a particularly dim recruit.

The not-so-mini-dragon took the bait and leapt at me once more. I jammed that hand in its gob, deliberately rubbing against the roof of the mouth in case it had the same instincts as a croc. Whether it did or not, it still immediately bit down, teeth spearing through the motorcycle glove. Its look of victory drained as a farting noise came out of its face and I whipped the remains of the bokken out from behind my back and jammed it in its eye, grinding it through the eye socket and into its tiny brain.

I was expecting death throes and writhing, and wasn’t dissapointed, but what I didn’t expect was the stupid beast to wrap its body around mine and to errupt with lightning.

I screamed and did the amp dance, trying desperately to pull the dying dragon off me. It didn’t help that the damned thing was tazing me the whole time and by the time I managed to get my muscles back under control life had left its body.

I slumped to the ground, exhausted. With the return of the street lights people had found their courage again and my fight had drawn a crowd. Not so brave that any would step in and lend a hand, but at least if I’d died someone could have called the meat wagon. Assuming there was enough left to stick in a box. Even with the dragon dead nobody wanted to get within fifteen meters of me so I took the time to suck in some deep breaths and let my heart rate settle.

When it was clear the danger was past a few folks approached and asked what happened. I told a heavily edited version of the tale, a dragon was hatching here and I just happened to be out on a cosplay photoshoot and jumped in. Words to that effect, anyway. Some guy stepped up and identified the kids as belonging to his neighbor and I asked if he’d help them get home. Nobody mentioned them being unconscious and I just hoped they’d assume the dragon did it.

Eventually the crowd dispersed again, people filtering back into their homes and I summoned the willpower to stand up. I had a whole new set of aches and pains and fresh wounds both physical and emotional to deal with so I turned to head home. I was about to pull the remains of my bokken from the dragon corpse (dibs on that as a band name, BTW) when I had a better idea. I left the weapon where it was and grabbed the beast by the tail and started to drag it behind me. In every LitRPG I’d ever read, dragon parts were awesome for crafting. Maybe I can make something out of this? I’ll google tanning leather when I get home.

I was just leaving the park with my booty in tow when I chanced on the last remaining wisp. Since I was in the looting mood, I peeled off my jacket - wincing and squeaking every time it pulled fresh skin from a wound - threw it over the wisp and tied the arms together in a makeshift basket. Waste not, want not.

I made whimpering noises the whole way home. Aimee would have been proud.