Feral shrieks woke me from the most restful sleep I had ever had. My Flesh Sorcery induced mini-coma along with the pocket generator amping up my healing factor put me in the best condition possible even though piercing golden light from the buttcrack of dawn was spearing directly into my bleary eyeballs. Ridiculous bangs accompanied the shrieks making me frantic in putting my combat gear on. I was decked out.
The screaming grew even more shrill as I peeked out my window; little moldy ugly green monsters with gnarled, pointy-ears and covered in hide-armor were running around outside. Feral gray and red wolves with six legs and two heads ran around the neighborhood howling their bloodthirst to the faint moon. The mutated wolves sported hooked collars of ivory.
“No freaking way!” I groaned quietly. “It’s too early for this!”
I watched as some of the damn goblins fired lopsided arrows at my house with crossbows, and a few more of them used strange silver rods that sparked explosive silver orbs. Each orb flew slowly before detonating pure concussive force. Behind the midget artillery and across the street was a small group of even smaller motherfuckers that were just staring at my house, their greedy pitch black eyes looking up. Three more behind them were plotting, somehow able to talk around their shark-like teeth. Brownish slime dripped from their spears that were twice as tall as they were.
[My Seed! Damnit! These bitches are after my Seed!] I winced at my unintended pun before putting it out of my mind and scrambling for my gear.
More than I could comprehend hinged on that tiny gift from the Messenger god.
Frantically, I waffled with indecision as the booms continued. [Plan, plan, I needed a fucking plan.]
My magic spear wasn’t right for this job; it was designed for overpowered monsters that mundane weaponry couldn’t handle. Currently, my house was dealing with a large group of small creatures and I needed large amounts of force-amplifying precision. Since I didn’t have a legit frag grenade, a gun and overbuffed flashbang rocks would have to do. Running upstairs and grabbing more ammo for my AR-15 with the spare magazines took thirty-seconds. I slung the rifle around my shoulders so it was hanging in my front, but not so I was actually holding it.
With my spear in my left hand, I conjured five of the oh-so-reliable flashbang pebbles in my right. Taking a second to check all of my gear also allowed me to fully wake up and summon the anger that had been continuously bubbling inside of me for the past couple days.
I killed a fucking nightwalker last night and met an ancient deity. No goblin-lookin shitstains are gonna ruin my day. Doesn’t matter if they screwed with my morning. I hate mornings anyway.
“Shock and awe baby, shock and awe.” I whispered as I held the flashbang pebbles, carefully pouring energy into the enchantments to crank up their power to the edge of what they could handle. These puppies should put an elephant on the ground. I pocketed three of them, opened the door and hurled two flashbangs at the group across the street. The rest of the flashbangs I pulled out and tossed in my front yard. Slamming my door shut, I quickly modified my bone helmet to cover my ears and the quartz eye lenses to be like shades. Bet I looked badass.
After three seconds, a series of staccato booms continued for five more and out the door I hopped with my rifle in one hand and spear in the other. Stabbing the base of the spear into the lawn, I activated my shield gauntlet and sighted down my rifle, finally getting a chance to put my miniscule army training to use. Making sure that the projected energy shield didn’t cover the barrel of my rifle took me a few seconds. Kneeling down against a quickly conjured column of stone like I’d been taught in the Army, I steadied my aim and quickly gunned down the six now blind alien creatures writhing at the edge of my lawn.
Bullets had zero issues putting holes into these squishy bastards unlike the ugly demon from last night. And I definitely had no mental qualms killing them. They were just far away enough from ‘human’ to present as ‘monster’ for me. The .223 rounds blew decent-sized holes out of their potbellies, staining the grass a nasty, sludgy, dark-green that melted the grass it fell on. Steaming patches of lawn died with every spray of alien blood. The larger group across the street wasn’t faring much better.
Turning my gaze upwards, I set my sights on the larger group. [Breathe in, breathe out.] I recited, focusing my thoughts on steadying my aim. That beautiful second of stillness just after exhalation is the perfect time to shoot. It’s the moment where your body is naturally at its most still. Quickly firing and pivoting to the next target, I repeated over and over, treating it just like Army shooting qualifications. A few more carefully placed rounds put down the ones I’d winged.
“Not too bad.” I muttered, picking my head up to get a lay of the land.
The pack of freaky wolves, each with too many heads and running on six limbs, scattered, taking off like a shot, spreading out to avoid me spewing death. “Assholes!” I growled, stalking forward to prevent them from getting too far away. One mongrel snuck up from behind me using the abundant concealment provided by terrain. With both mouths, the knockoff Cerberus tore into my leg.
Bone spikes exploded out from my armor tearing my flesh free just after his two sets of fangs ripped into my calf. More spikes grew out to discourage more alien dogs from getting to my legs as I fell to the ground. Somehow, I managed to flail and put two rounds in the evil bastard with my blood in his mouth. Patching myself up with a quick patch job of Flesh Sorcery, I snarled as I hauled my butt into the kneeling position, firing two rounds each to put the nasty creatures down.
God they stank, their thick blood carried strong hints of sewer and rotten flesh. By the time I put down all the dogs I could find I found myself across the street. I turned back towards my own house and saw a group of three goblins on top of my house. These three were much bigger than the fodder that I had just taken care of. Clearly they were the ones in charge. Two wore jewelry of gold and silver while all three had on armor that was of much better quality than their now dead horde.
At about forty yards away, these were definitely an easy shot for me. Old magazine out, new one in. I limped backwards on my still-healing leg a few more feet and posted up on the hood of my neighbor’s car that was way too rusty and took aim, my crosshairs on the closest one. The rooftop invaders weren’t looking at me and didn’t even seem to notice that they didn’t have their putrid army anymore. All of their attention was focused on the center of my roof.
“Scumbags came to the wrong damn house today.” I snarled, gently squeezing the trigger. My first bullet ricocheted upward revealing a rippling light where the bullet wound should have been.
I cursed loudly in disbelief. “Fucking shields?! Who the fuck said you get to have shields!” Their lack of a response just pissed me off more.
Angrily pumping the rest of my rounds into the shield showed that it was getting weaker as the ripples grew more frantic and visible from the rounds hitting it like a pond after dropping a whole bucket of pebbles into it. Acrid smoke barely burned my eyes as I squinted through it. Pouring on the fire, my well oiled rifle burnt through the rest of my three spare mags in less than two minutes. Fine, if they were going to play ‘ignore the human’ behind their fancy magic shield, and I couldn’t exactly bring the house down, then I was going to bring the house to them.
I may not be able to get through their shield with modern weaponry, especially since I didn’t want to harm my house, but I could work around that; or rather, under that.
Dropping my rifle so that my sling would catch it nicely against my chest, I ran back across the street and past my spear, still upright in the yard, and placed both of my hands on one of the oak seedlings in the corner of my house - feeling the magic running through it, connecting it to the others and to the focal point on my roof. The inlaid copper cable really came in handy.
“You want my fucking seed? I’ll give you my fucking seed! Bitch!” I yelled, unconcerned with how it sounded.
I reached my mind through the oaken tree-vine, down the copper cable and into the generator powering the whole tree-growth setup and blasted the enchantment with my will setting the energy flow to high. The raw mana blasted through the cables flowing to the seedlings and out to the World Tree acorn as the growth limiter restriction shattered from the sudden influx of mana. With my Nature Sorcery immersed in the enchantments that were embedded in the plants, it felt like my brain was riding a bucking anaconda. The seedlings visibly grew in size and width, growing more branches that snaked upwards all the while pumping the main Seed full of pure life.
Rapid growth vacuumed up all of the energy being sent at it from the generator as the oaken coating quickly encased my house. I had no problem moving up my time table to make my house a fortress and corpses do make good fertilizer. The cage surrounding my latest planting on the roof kept the majority of the focused energy sealed for a few moments, functioning as an impromptu pressure cooker, but I needed it to pop. I directed the battery charging generator in the basement to send its energy to the four oaks and cranked up the flow to max. The rooftop cage started shaking, cracking with streams of light pouring from within.
My idle musings happen in the oddest moments, the experience of being near death in odd situations lended itself to less than rational thinking. The oak seedling that looked and acted like a vine under the influence of my will and enchantments shook as massive amounts of power flooded through it, straining the living structure of the plant. For a second, I thought it was going to blow up in my face.
Focusing my will, I steeled myself as the plant grew thicker, adapting to the increasing flow of mana. I laughed, feeling the joy of doing something powerful and great with my magic. I was most comfortable with my Mana, Earth and Flesh Sorceries at this point in my journey as I used those powers constantly and for almost everything up to this point. I really need to learn to take advantage of the Water and Nature sorceries more.
What’s even worse is that I can’t believe I’m pondering this as hulking goblins are on my roof trying to steal from me, but what else do I have going on? It was one of the moments that for some reason just kinda stretched, as if the world was frozen and I had all the time in the world to contemplate it. I did have plenty of options. I could instantly make ice spears and hurl them, summon a tidal wave and drown my enemies, or throw rose vine seeds and use them to tear and strangle enemies while the animals of the earth heed my call to battle. A few weeks of rest and calm experimentation would do me good. If Earth’s invaders decide to leave me alone.
Fat chance.
Each bloody moment was a flash of staggered movement, a rave dance in the day time, a slide-show of action. The cage broke as Yggdrasil sprouted, four roots extending out and connecting to branches of the four seedlings reaching up ever further. I watched with my magical senses as the fifth root, with a full generator reinforcing it, grew down from the seed of the World Tree and plowed straight down through the double-layered reinforced stone roof like a hot drill through butter. The questing root shone with ethereal power as it plunged further down, shattering the basement floor to reach the earth beneath the foundation. It kept going, far past what my senses could reach.
Even as this happened, the upward growth was just as scary - roughly two-feet upwards every three seconds and widening just as quickly. The growth enveloped the three intruders like the Blob as it grew around them bursting their shield, crushing them, spearing through them and absorbing their writhing bodies within seconds. The sizzling from their acidic blood that spurted out as they were crushed simply washed off the branches.
Wondrous.
The trunk widened to encompass my house and I shook my head to snap out of it. Quickly throwing my will into the growing World Tree, I grabbed a hold of the embedded enchantments as they loosened and forced the expanding core of the tree around the house. I simultaneously stimulated the tree to treat my house as a natural hollow or cavern while also encouraging it to not crush my house at the same time. The oak seedlings of the house corners assimilated to become roots for the World Tree and my four seedlings also expanded in girth, anchoring the cosmic plant at intermediate points turning it into a shield for my living space.
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“It worked!” I crowed, sweat dripping down my face and back. Staggering backwards to take it all in, I yelled. “I am all that is man! Behold my interdimensional treehouse! Take that mom!”
Maybe my delirious squawking was immature but it made me recall some irritating memory of my mother telling a six-year old me that grownups don’t live in treehouses. Showed her. Not that I really knew what I was doing. All of this was me winging it by the seat of my pants.
Exhaustion weighed on my shoulders, causing me to stumble inside the house and down to the basement. Fumbling at the enchantment containing the still raging flow of power, I managed to turn off the battery generator that had been redirected to the tree and then turned the other one down to low.
Taking a few minutes to sit down and analyze my setup, I saw that I still had some work to do so that this wouldn’t get out of hand yet again. Quickly giving myself a small burst of energy by pushing my Flesh Sorcery to forcibly perk myself up, I turned to my work. Time flew by as the beams of translucent light wove themselves according to my will, the enchantments themselves bending and twisting as my mind danced among wondrous innovations. So much potential was wrapped up in something that humanity could have used for so much good. And definitely for impossible evil.
Musings aside, I altered the growth enchantment into a mana storage and structural reinforcement enchantment which took me about an hour. Another hour went by as I closely monitored the enchantment spreading out, the weaves of power flowing to the entire plant.
It looked awesome. It really did.
My house was a part of the World Tree. An insignificant part, but a part nonetheless. The view on the magical side of things gave me a very different perspective than just the gray walls of the stone covered basement. As the power flows were so intense and expansive, my Mana Sorcery allowed me to see the energies as if I had x-ray vision.
The mana flowing from the generator was clear with a hint of yellow and blue and as it spread throughout the granite covering my walls it turned into a brown mixed with chunks of gray. The oaken covering on the outside of my house shone a rich solid brown and when I looked up toward the crown of the massive tree above my house and down towards its thick root, I saw every color.
Yggdrasil’s main root was the centerpiece of my basement and how could it not be? A physical entity that served as a connection between this planet and the rest of the magical realms? Supposedly? That’s what the Norse believed. And staring at it as it gently pulsed with every color, most of which I had no name for, I could believe it also.
Solid brown bark that was so craggy and tough it could put a redwood to shame encased my dwelling, the pulse of incandescent life bringing with it a steady presence of a new kind of consciousness. I could sense the soul of the tree stretching out and connecting to something other, something that stretched far past what I could feel.
I had to get a better look. Stepping back outside unfortunately brought me directly in line with a nasty cross breeze that wafted the putrid scent of the dead goblins lying around me. I held my breath in order to not puke. My eyes watered as I looked around the carnage decorating what used to be a lovely little neighborhood.
Barely holding my gorge back, I set my shoulders and put my magic to work. [Getting rid of dead bodies is just too easy.] I thought, sinking the bodies into the earth and gathering them near the roots of the World Tree. [Earth Sorcery for the win, damn good thing I’m not a serial killer.]
With the memory of the smell ruining my appetite, I decided to skip breakfast and explore. Turning off the pang of hunger with Flesh Sorcery was almost a casual afterthought.
[Damn, magic is cool.] Glancing around at the more bare yet cleaner landscape, I bit my lip. [Anyways, those damn goblins had to come from somewhere and unfortunately probably somewhere close.]
My thoughts weren’t a comfort. I put my rifle away in my house since I didn’t want to waste any more rounds, blew a kiss to my lady and grabbed my spear as I set off. Not only could I smell the stench on the wind but I could feel magic to the east that felt similar to my new tree.
From what I could divine from my visitor, I’d bet the money I didn’t have that it was magic related to Space Sorcery or some kind of interdimensional gate. I mean, the tree was definitely soaked in magic that reeked of nature and life, but the soul of it gave off another more solid feel that didn’t have the crumbly, heady touch of earth. I made it about a football field in all of my gear before sweat started pouring along my scalp. My Flesh Sorcery made my body more in shape from my efforts from the other day, but it was still hot outside.
Ducking into what appeared to be an abandoned home from a neighbor whose face I couldn’t remember, I stopped and decided to attempt a plan I thought of the day before. After checking that nobody was in fact home, I secured myself in the main room.
“Why am I here?” My complaints went unheard as I glared at the raggedy visage sullenly staring right back at me. “All because some trumped up alcoholic deity struggling with boredom said to? ‘Extermine’, he said. Why? Just because they attack my house and everything about them smells like rotting garbage that even mold would turn its nose up at?”
Mocking didn’t make me feel better. Sitting on the chair and allowing my body to unwind for a few minutes, that did. And speaking aloud helped get me back into the right headspace. “True, the nasty fucks did attack my home, which means they did attack me and my house. And Elizabeth can’t defend herself right now. Exterminate, ugh, it even sounds ugly.”
Grimacing and rubbing at the crick in my neck, I glanced out the small window and then around the abandoned master bedroom. Perfectly ordinary. White comforter with too many throw pillows near the top and a nicely folded blanket at the foot of the bed. Everything clearly used to be perfectly clean until it was abandoned. I monitored my amulet’s mana output as the clean flow cycled through the batteries making sure that they were always full before pouring into my body to bolster my vitality.
Groaning at myself for ending my self-imposed break, I mentally fought the less than ideal condition of my body. I wish I had had a year to prepare for this, at least to just get my body back in a good shape.
“Work smarter, not harder.” I snarked, resolving to continue to learn from my mistakes. My Flesh Sorcery allowed me to access my stores of fat far quicker than any normal person, perking me up and relieving most of my exhaustion. Pulling on my healing amulet, the mana washed away my aches and pains as my body recovered as if I had taken a pain reliever and had a good nap.
“Nice.”
Turning my attention towards innovation, I decided to test out something I’d been wondering about. Enchantment with my Mana Sorcery seems to be pretty easy as long as I can get a reasonable picture of what I want to accomplish and provide a power source. Using mathematical symbols and rough drawings captures my intent well enough.
My eyes lingered on a dusty DVD collection for a few minutes as I zoned out. Laughing at a stray thought, I got up and picked through them. “Predator, classic. Star Wars next to Spaceballs, my kind of people. Obviously cultured individuals . . . and here we go, ha! Back to the Future, all of them.”
I glanced down at my boots as I stood up from kneeling in front of the cabinet. The only reason my feet weren’t unbelievably sore is due to my Flesh Sorcery working overtime to keep me healthy. Transportation just made its way to the top of my priority list.
Figuring that I’d take a lesson from history, and some of the best fiction we used to have, I smirked as an idea took hold. My Mana Sorcery instincts thrummed with a warm confirmation as I ran my mental schematics past them. “Oh hell yes!” I yelled, excited to get to work. Quickly conjuring a roughly oblong plate of stone in the shape of a skateboard, I molded it to be longer and wider to suit me. I muttered as I worked. “I’m thinking on par with a longboard but thicker and wider, more along the lines of a boogie board.”
Checking again to make sure I could stand on it, I inscribed my own interpretation of an ‘anti-gravity’ enchantment, which actually was a ‘repel earth’ enchantment. Technically not anti gravity but similar enough with the end result to be kind of the same thing. I sniggered as it was a badly etched picture of Marty McFly on his own hoverboard with a flying bird underneath him. My Mana Sorcery and Earth Sorcery agreed on enough of the basic concepts as they joined that there was no negative feedback as I reviewed the enchantments one last time.
Setting a conjured quartz crystal into the middle of the stone structure and filling it up to the max with mana from my amulet, I crossed my fingers and switched on the enchantment. The improvised hoverboard lightly kicked off the ground, humming in place just a bit higher than knee height. I experimented with the enchantment for a few minutes, making sure that it expanded to the entire board so that no part of the board would be more or less attracted to the earth than another part. A quick pulse of power to the back made it rise and another to the front made it drop.
After jiggering a propulsion enchantment that would move in the direction I leaned without applying independent power, I styled the board to look more like the Silver Surfer’s board, all long and shiny smooth. Sue me for the inspiration but my first hoverboard was going to look freaking cool. Ten minutes of adding two foot-shaped indents into the body of the board for stability and a jumping stress test finished the project, I was off!
Coasting on my hoverboard outside at ten miles per hour gave me a chance to think as I cruised towards what I hoped was the entryway of the goblins. Their magical presence lingered in the area as if someone slaughtered a diseased skunk and rubbed wherever they walked.
Seeing as I couldn’t miss the trail, I stopped for a moment to pick a rose from another neighbor’s rosebush and idly played with the seeds with my Nature Sorcery. My goal was to see if I could make disposable thorny rose vines that ensnared whatever I targeted. Crowd control, (how we serious nerds term snares, roots and other ways to impede movement) is king.
My thumbnail scratched out thin enchantments of fast growth and structural reinforcement in the seed core along with a vampiric thirst on the parts that would grow into thorns. I channeled a bunch of mana into the seeds and set a conditional trigger so that when I throw them, they’ll go off. A feral grin crossed my face as I looked forward to testing these babies out.
*******
Humans have technically been the top predator on this planet for more than several thousand years but we’ve definitely domesticated ourselves downwards in the last thousand or so. Shivers ran down my spine as other instincts, the non magical kind, reared their head as I tracked my prey. Kinda frightening to feel that ancient primal bloodlust only a few days in. Part of me anticipated the slaughter, the sheer rush of endorphins as I claimed land and tore down all opposition.
The weather however only depicted the happiest of moods as my trip east eventually took me down to where the river widened where it made its eventual path to the ocean. The beautiful day only got better as the area opened up even though I didn’t see anyone at the river. The lazy Rappahanock tumbled and played as bright sunlight glinted off the wet rocks.
[Wonder what happened to that old guy and the necromancer kid? Can’t even guess if they’re still alive.] I thought as I took in the scenery. [I bet if I hadn’t scared the crap outta that kid, he definitely wouldn’t be.]
I took a break at a bend in the river and just sat on my hoverboard for a bit, feet dangling over the water as I strengthened the earth-repelling enchantment so I could float about ten-feet above the river. I hadn’t been this far away from my house since everything changed. Anxiety reared its ugly little head. Some outlines for future plans popped into my brain as I watched the river toss and play under me, silvery glints of fish darting in and out of the sunlight. Birch and hickory trees formed an edge along the river.
I really should have known, or at least anticipated something close to it. In a rare moment of peace, I let my guard down and relaxed. The day was beautific, without a cloud in the sky and nothing in sight, at least around or below me. A shadow shielded me from the sun for a split second as I rested over the river. There was no sound or cry or scream, just a missile of flesh and feathers that hit me from above, smashing me off the hoverboard into the river.
“Aghggbbhhphhhh!” I screamed-burbled as I slammed into the river. The impact from my stealthy attacker tore my spear from my grasp even as my hoverboard wobbled but stayed floating up in the sky. Cold water tore at my senses, breaking my shock even as my Water Sorcery came at my beck - cushioning my fall, then pushing me towards the surface. With a mix of instinct and confused desire at my will actually manifesting, I haphazardly pulled myself to stand up on the surface of the river.
“Whoa!” Another extension of my will pulled the water off from the top of my skin, instantly drying me. “Hahahaha!” I shrieked with a mix of pain and joy, then commanded the river to bring me my spear. An arm of water spit it at me. I searched the skies as the river pivoted to aid me.
Can’t believe I hadn’t played on the river with Water Sorcery! I felt like a creature made for this. The current jumped and played around me in whatever shape I desired and fed energy to, all the while my will threaded and diffused through it. Pure amazement kept me from feeling the rage of being attacked.
The shadow briefly covered me again and I instantly pointed my spear up, bracing myself with the obedient river all the while being blinded by the sun. My attacker swerved around my spear and then curved up and away from me. I caught a glimpse of it before it flapped almost straight up towards the sun, trying to hide in the bright source of daylight. It was ugly, like most things I had met after the Ripple, the feminine body shape marred by crooked wings for arms and a snarled eagle’s beak for a mouth; a harpy.
A harpy, according to Roman mythology, is a cross between a woman and a bird, usually of a cruel and nasty nature. This bitch’s attacks seemed to be proof of that. They breed with unsuspecting men that they trap and then eat them for sustenance.
I really wanted to hit her but the spear didn’t seem to be the best way to do it since I didn’t want to throw it. And the first blast of raw power from the other night took most of my stores of energy. As if it heard my thoughts, the spear’s wooden core and the crystal spearhead condensed on its own until I was holding a mace in my hand.
[Holy bananas it read my mind.] Choosing not to question the weapon’s reaction to my offhand desire, I held it like a baseball bat, sinking down a bit into the water, a coiled viper anticipating my prey.
As the harpy made another dive bomb, I had the water catapult me directly at her as I swung for the heavens. It wasn’t even fair, the magically enhanced spear/mace coming into contact with her head was gross. Her head split open like an axed melon while the energy I had stored in the staff erupted out to vaporize most of her. Bloody chunks dispersed from the impact and scattered across the sky and water. Landing back in the water was a welcome relief as my new natural environment caught and cleaned me in one enveloping embrace. Bloody feathers continued to fall from the sky for a few moments.
Getting back to my hoverboard was easy. The river obediently lifted me up at a thought and then resumed its natural course just as easily. I didn’t even have any blood spatter on me.
[Damn I love Sorcery.] I mused, checking myself to make sure that shock and adrenaline weren’t hiding any injuries. Good sense would dictate staying on the river, being in my element affords a level of protection that feels similar to home. I eased the enchantment on the hoverboard so that it floated on the surface of the water directly, river surfing instead of flying ten feet above it.
Holding my newly formed mace, I considered the strangeness of my weapon’s independent actions not five-minutes ago. It turned into a mace when I wanted to smash something, and it released concussive energy without me directing it to, almost like it was somewhat sentient or sensitive to my emotional desires.
As the river gently guided me down its lazy current, I focused on my weapon and imagined that it was a knife. Nothing. I filled it with energy and did it again, no dice.
[Well fuck, if will doesn’t work, then maybe emotion might.] I pondered, schooling my thoughts. I imagined the goblins from earlier and me stabbing them, the weight of the mace didn’t change but its shape matched to what I viscerally imagined, a slender, wickedly sharp, serrated dirk.
“You and I are going places, beautiful,” I cooed to my beautiful shapeshifting blade, admiring the way the light played through the crystal. “Think I’ll call you . . . ‘Gungnir’, the very weapon of Odin himself. I might even use you to do some crazy shit. I dunno, slay a dragon, destroy a Gate . . .”
“When did humans get so pathetic?”
The unexpected words caught me off guard even as I raised my knife and frantically looked around.
[No sir. That did not just happen. My weapon did not just talk to me. I fucking swear, if this is . . .]
“Seriously, when? I mean, it's only been a couple dozen thousand years without magic. Back in my heyday y’all had balls.”
Ok, the voice is definitely not coming from the knife. I swiveled around on my hoverboard, searching and stretching with my magical senses for anything as I yanked the hoverboard back up to ten feet over the river.
“Down here ya misguided sack of primordial chaotic slime. Your hairy cousins could figure this out faster and they didn’t even have fire yet.”